


Lethe's Shore

by linaerys



Category: Heroes - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-09-11
Updated: 2007-09-10
Packaged: 2017-10-21 07:55:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 6
Words: 56,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/222786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linaerys/pseuds/linaerys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five years in the future, Nathan is President. After years apart, Peter comes to see him, to rescue him or to bring him down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to [](http://mandysbitch.livejournal.com/profile)[**mandysbitch**](http://mandysbitch.livejournal.com/), [](http://alizarin-nyc.livejournal.com/profile)[**alizarin_nyc**](http://alizarin-nyc.livejournal.com/) and [](http://technosage.livejournal.com/profile)[**technosage**](http://technosage.livejournal.com/) for audiencing. Thank you to [](http://blithesea.livejournal.com/profile)[**blithesea**](http://blithesea.livejournal.com/) for her awesome vid, and [](http://just-katarin.livejournal.com/profile)[**just_katarin**](http://just-katarin.livejournal.com/) for her beautiful art. And big, huge hugs and thank yous again to [](http://technosage.livejournal.com/profile)[**technosage**](http://technosage.livejournal.com/) for organizing [](http://heroes-bigboom.livejournal.com/profile)[**heroes_bigboom**](http://heroes-bigboom.livejournal.com/), for holding my hand through the whole process and for beta-ing the story. I couldn't have done it without you.

**Part 1**

 **Washington DC, January, 2011.**

Peter walks in through the front door. It takes a little time, and calls routed through various offices, a too-friendly pat-down, but finally a trim woman in a tight suit and heels too expensive for a government worker shows Peter into the Oval Office.

Nathan hugs him right away, a big open-armed hug, barely a glance of suspicion before taking Peter in his arms. His arms are strong—he must still be finding time to work out even as President. He smells different than Peter remembers, new hair gel, new cologne, a new mistress, maybe. Heidi never liked cologne.

As soon as the door closes, Nathan tightens his grasp on Peter’s arm and narrows his eyes, all affability gone in a second. The hug was theater for those watching and listening, and Peter feels foolish for believing in it, even for a moment.

Peter looks at Nathan and sees someone less than the brother he remembers, just another false, empty-shirt politician. He still has the charisma, that ability to make people mirror him, echo him, follow him anywhere, but it seems to be fraying around the edges.

“We’ll talk later in the residence,” said Nathan. Peter reaches out automatically read the thoughts he can’t get from Nathan’s expression and finds . . . blankness. A blankness he’s only felt a few times before. Nathan must have reached some détente with their mother or the Haitian’s allegiance has shifted.

“I have meetings now.” Nathan presses a button on his desk and two Secret Service agents come into the room. Nathan raises his eyebrows at them and says, “Take good care of my brother.”

“Armed guards,” says Peter as they escort him from the room. “You used to trust me.”

Nathan doesn’t answer.

Peter sits in an easy-chair and watches TV while he waits for Nathan to return. Mohinder’s article is the lead story on all the major networks, but Peter knows it didn’t come as a surprise. The whispers were growing. Now there is proof.

Peter watches the sky darken over an expanse of well-manicured lawn. “Mr. President,” says Peter when Nathan enters the room. In the twilight darkness, Nathan’s eyes are circled with blue shadows. He looks like he hasn’t slept in months. He looks old. Then he glances at Peter sharply, and he’s Nathan again, vital and predatory. If he’s not sleeping, it’s because he’s too important to waste time that way.

“Peter,” says Nathan, voice now cool. “I’ve had people watching you in India. You seemed happy. You and Suresh.”

“I’m here now,” says Peter. _We are happy. We were._ He pushes aside the anger at Nathan watching them together. It doesn’t matter now.

“Yes.” Nathan presses his lips together. “Are you back to stay? Or just here to question my integrity again?”

“Do you want me to?” asks Peter, raising an eyebrow at Nathan. He spreads his hands open—see, not hiding anything—and drops his voice low. “Because I can try again.”

Nathan’s eyes are on him, speculative, and if he could read Nathan’s thoughts he knows he'd hear Nathan weighing up the options.

“Have a drink,” says Nathan. “Stay a while.” He calls for someone to fix drinks, scotch for himself, vodka for Peter. He remembers: Peter drinks what their mother drank, Nathan what their father had. Nathan sits down on the couch opposite Peter’s chair and settles back, arm stretched out along the top of the couch.

“Send the Haitian away,” says Peter when the attendant left. “Trust me.”

Nathan gives Peter a disbelieving look. “Why should I? You left. And now you’re back, right before the world goes crazy over the ‘mutant problem’. You want something.”

 _Just to save you._ “I wasn’t trying to hurt you. I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone.”

“Which is more than you can say for me.” Nathan takes a sip from his glass. Peter can see the strain in his shoulders, his jaw, can see him fighting not to take more than a tiny sip.

“It gets harder, doesn’t it?” Peter leans forward. “This is killing you, Nathan, I can see it.”

“We all do what we have to do.” It sounds like something he’s been saying to himself for so long it no longer has meaning. “Why did you come here, Peter?”

“There are people who want to hurt you.”

Nathan frowns. “What is this, a threat?”

Peter doesn’t say anything. He could as soon ask Nathan to stop being President as he could to stop being a Petrelli. “I missed you, Nathan.”

“I missed you too, Peter.” Nathan’s face softens slightly.

Peter didn’t know if this would be easy or hard, getting close to Nathan, whether the memory of Mohinder would make him keep his distance, but it’s easy to move next to Nathan on the couch, to tease his fingers along Nathan’s wrist, until Nathan pins Peter’s hand to the cushion with his own.

“I don’t believe you, Peter.”

Peter gasps; he doesn’t have to act the part now, he wants Nathan as much as he ever did. He still loves Mohinder, of course, but Nathan is here, and needs him.

At first they don’t touch except for a few places, Nathan’s fingertips against Peter’s neck before he takes his hand away and leads Peter into the bedroom. Peter wants to ask why Nathan is making it so easy for him, but this is easier than talking; it is something they can agree on.

Nathan touches Peter’s face, as familiar as breathing, and parts Peter’s lips with his thumb. Nathan likes to see Peter take everything Nathan gives him, greedily, always wanting more, but he’s gentler than Peter remembers, or maybe just afraid Peter will slip away again. “What’s happened to you, Nathan?” Peter asks, hoping to feel Nathan _push_ him again, pin him up against the wall, be who Peter remembers. Nathan doesn’t answer, too intent on unbuttoning Peter’s shirt, pulling Peter down on top of him; if Nathan wants to forget the past, not to talk about it, Peter can give him that too.

Peter doesn’t try to kiss him; he understands they aren’t ready for that yet, not after two years apart, not after Mohinder between the last time with Nathan and this. It’s already too intimate, too attractive, Nathan’s hands all over him, Nathan’s eyes on him. Peter wants to reach up and pull Nathan’s lips to his, just to make him close his eyes.

Nathan runs his hands down Peter’s now bare back, and around his ass, letting his fingers nudge into the cleft. “I missed you,” he says, and it sounds darker, more possessive now.

“You sent me away.”

Nathan sucks on Peter’s neck rather than answer, hard enough to be painful, leaving a bruise that doesn’t heal right away, not with the Haitian next door blocking his powers. Peter smiles at that—an upside to Nathan’s paranoia. Right now, Nathan can fuck him and make him feel it the next morning, the way they used to—Peter misses walking around, being reminded every time he moves of those moments together. Part of his humanity is stripped away with each new power he gains.

“President Petrelli,” says Peter, remembering a time when every one of Nathan’s successes made Peter feel proud.

Peter rubs Nathan through the fabric of his trousers then slides off his lap and down so he can breathe hot air through the fabric and make Nathan harder. He undoes Nathan’s fly with his hands—no telekinesis here.

“You sure you don’t want to send the Haitian away? You know what I can do.” Peter runs his hand down Nathan’s stomach, hoping to remind him of times when he’d been in Nathan’s mind as surely as Nathan had been inside him, feeling what he felt.

“I’m sure.” Peter sees a flash of mistrust in his eyes.

“Okay then, fuck me like you used to, before any of this.” Peter kisses the inside of Nathan’s leg, then sucks and bites the skin there until Nathan pulls his head back, not too forcefully, but enough to tell Peter he’s skating the line of behavior Nathan tolerates—just where Nathan wants him. There is a mark reddening where Peter’s mouth was.

“Alright,” Nathan says. Peter crawls up into bed and spread his legs wide, trying to forget why he is there, forget anything except Nathan’s fingers, slicked by lube from his bedside drawer, circling his entrance and then pushing in. Anyone else, Peter would ask him to slow down, make it gentler, but not Nathan, not when he’s wearing that frown of single-minded concentration, comically at odds with his cock springing up between his legs. _Nathan always takes his pleasures seriously_.

He does slow down, without Peter telling him, working his finger slowly in and out, so slowly that Peter can feel each knuckle slide through the muscles there. “More,” he breathes, and Nathan gives him more. Peter wraps his hand around his own cock and strokes it lightly, teasing himself along with Nathan’s deeper touches.

Peter strokes himself absently until Nathan says, “Look at me.” He looks up into Nathan’s dark eyes, at his face lit by the golden light of the bedside lamp, and wants to tell Nathan everything. Together, maybe they can fight Bennet’s plans. He wants to put his life back in Nathan’s hands the way his body is now. Peter presses back on Nathan’s fingers, fucking himself on them. Mohinder is not here—it’s just him and Nathan now, and Nathan never fails to make Peter feel wanton.

“Please, Nathan,” says Peter, and that’s all Nathan needs to start fucking him harder

Nathan pulls his fingers out and puts his cock against Peter’s entrance and pushes. Peter cants his hips up to let him in. He closes his eyes and sees Mohinder above him, in him, for a moment, but when he opens them he sees Nathan, wide mouth open like he’s trying to catch rain with it. Nathan fucks him hard, intense, and Peter coming hardly even slows him down.

He comes with his eyes closed tight. He hardly looks like himself, his face too contorted with something besides pleasure. “Why did you come back?” he asks again. Peter looks away, and Nathan sighs and pulls out. He takes his robe down from a hook on the wall, puts it on and belts it.

“I missed you,” says Peter again.

“You think that’s a good enough reason?”

Nathan shrugs minutely and goes to the bathroom. Peter hears a thread of longing, guilt, Nathan’s usual emotional mixture, just a hint of a thought and then the wall is back. Was the Haitian distracted for a moment? Peter wonders if he can somehow hear what they’ve been doing in here, and smiles, not happily. He reaches again and the connection is gone, that wall of blankness back again.

He goes to the window and pulls back the curtains enough that he can see the Washington Monument, tall and white in the distance. The Haitian’s sphere of influence can’t possibly be big enough to stop him before he got far enough to fly. He can leave now, maybe get to Bennet and stop them. _Kill them_.

No, not that.

Nathan walks over to him again, and puts his hand on Peter’s shoulder, bare still. “Are you leaving?” he asks, his voice half-hopeful. Peter turns and puts both hands on Nathan’s shoulders.

“I’m staying,” he says. “We belong together.”

***

It’s dark when Peter wakes up, but light comes in around the heavy curtains of the master bedroom in the East Wing of the White House. His hand still rests on Nathan’s chest, and he feels its slow rise and fall under his palm. Nathan’s sleeping, deeply. Peter wonders again how long its been since Nathan really rested, if it’s his presence that makes it possible. Peter takes his hand away slowly, trying not to disturb Nathan, and sits up in the bed.

Something is different, a feeling in the air, under his skin. Peter reaches out with his mind, and finds that power no longer damped down; he can hear the buzz of Nathan’s dreaming, lucid and near wakefulness. It’s an argument with Heidi, about him. Peter doesn’t want to know, not now. It was all fine when he rivaled Heidi for Nathan’s affections, and neither could be called the winner, but now he feels guilty when he thinks about her.

Not as guilty as Nathan, though. The words of an argument between her and Nathan are sharp in Peter’s mind even as he tries to shut them out. Nathan murmurs in his sleep, and he puts his hand on Nathan’s shoulder to wake him now. “Nathan, wake up. It’s a dream.”

Nathan has a trick of being instantly awake in the morning that Peter could never master. He opens his eyes and looks at Peter. Nothing of his face is visible in the room’s darkness except his dark eyes and the flat pane of his cheek. “No, it’s not,” Nathan says. His eyes widen. “You knew what I was dreaming.”

“You were talking in your sleep.” Peter smoothes the hair back from Nathan’s forehead and Nathan frowns, not wanting, it seems, to be the object of Peter’s solicitude.

“You should relax more,” says Peter absently. He can feel it, the potentiality under his fingertips. Nathan’s memories are there behind his eyes, and Peter could take them, as easily as he could glide out the window and into the sky. As easily as he could blink back to India, back to his clinic, and Mohinder’s arms. He pulls his hand back, hoping Nathan doesn’t notice his sudden uneasiness.

So, this is it. Nathan’s last defense against Peter is gone. Peter can feel the Haitian in the room beyond—Robert, the man’s mind supplies to him instantly. His name is Robert. Some time during the night his control must have slipped entirely, enough that Peter has his powers.

This is how he’ll do it. Nathan will never consent to leave the White House while he has his mind and memories, but Peter can make him forget. It’s a terrible thing to do, but what Bennet will do to Nathan would be worse.

Before Peter can second-guess himself, he puts his thumb and forefinger on either side of Nathan’s forehead and _reaches_. “Peter,” says Nathan sharply, but then he subsides, face slack under Peter’s fingers.

The tide of memories catches Peter off balance. They slip by like water in a river, until one stands out—a golden day at the Nantucket house, Peter in Nathan’s bed, from _Nathan’s_ perspective, his hair under Nathan’s hands, his skin soft and easily bruised.

Peter pulls his hand away. Nathan’s skin is burning him. No, not Nathan’s skin, it’s deeper, it’s wrongness in his head, his mind not his own anymore, a fire of memories, confusing and mingling with his own. He sees Heidi through Nathan’s eyes, the last time Nathan saw her, her blue eyes bright with tears. He sees himself, many times: now gasping and begging, now fevered and near dying. Then leaving.

He stretches out his hands to look at them through the fog of Nathan’s memories begging for his attention and expects to see them burning the way they did that day in Kirby Plaza. Peter is alone now that he’s robbed Nathan of the will to rescue him. No, not that, the Haitian’s power doesn’t leave a visible signature in his skin, but it’s just as dangerous, just as irreversible as Ted’s pyrotechnics.

He knows now why the Haitian never speaks. If Peter were to open his mouth, Nathan’s memories would come spilling out, things he has no right to know: Nathan’s fights with Heidi, state secrets, self-doubts so private he never even shared them with Peter.

He ransacks the memories in his mind. He took everything past Nathan’s military years. Meredith isn’t there—at least Peter was spared that—but Peter has all of Heidi in his mind, from their first meeting to their last fight.

He took more than he ever meant to, far beyond Nathan’s presidency; he robbed Nathan of all the things that lie between them.

He pulls back, scrambles off the bed and runs over to the window. He wants to fly away from here, find some way to scrub Nathan’s memories out of his mind. “I never wanted this,” he whispers.

He looks back at Nathan on the bed. Nathan sits up and rubs his forehead. He slides his feet into the slippers left by the side of the bed, and pulls down a robe from a hook on the wall.

“Peter?” he says. “What . . .?”

Peter can hear Nathan’s confused thoughts with painful clarity.

“You know who . . .” Peter has to swallow down a lump in his throat; nausea or tears, he’s not sure which.

“You look like Peter,” Nathan says. “My foolish brother. But you’re too old.”

“I’m thirty-one.”

“Peter is sixteen. Who are you really?” _What am I doing here?_

 _Here_. Peter looks around the room, the dark swaths of fabric shadowing the bed, the deep, rich carpet into which his bare feet sink. Nathan looks also, and Peter can hear his mind starting to make connections. A bathrobe with the seal of the president on the breast pocket hangs on a hook by the bed.

“I am your brother Peter. And I’m here to save you.” He walks close to Nathan who frowns at him, disbelieving. Peter remembers that look too well from the campaign office, the skeptical push in Nathan’s eyes when Peter told him, “When I’m with you, Nathan, I can fly.”

“Pete, what the . . . ?” says Nathan as Peter puts his arms around Nathan, and blinks them to New York.

Peter hasn’t planned this out, doesn’t even know if this apartment is tenanted by someone else now. The Petrellis haven’t amassed wealth upon wealth by continuing to pay rent on empty Manhattan apartments, but Peter finds it the same as he’d left it those four years ago, CDs spilled out over the table from when he decided which ones to pack. He doesn’t even want to imagine what the refrigerator looks like.

“Okay . . . Peter.” Nathan speaks his name as if it belongs to someone other than his brother. “What just happened?”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m going to find out what happened to you.” Lies, too many lies in every word Peter speaks. For the rest of his life he’ll be lying to Nathan, worse than Nathan ever lied to him.

“You’re really Peter?” Nathan's eyebrows come together, and Peter can hear the confusion even more now. “Is this . . . a dream?” Nathan gives Peter a disbelieving look. Nathan doesn’t deal in dreams and visions, not fifteen years ago, and not now.

“I’m really Peter. This isn’t a dream. It’s 2011, and you’re . . . you’ve lost some time, Nathan.” Peter rubs his fingers across his lips and then drops his hand to his side. Nathan told him once that liars tend to cover their mouths when they talk, subconsciously warning the object of their manipulations. Nathan learned to drop those mannerisms long ago, but Peter never did. He puts his hand on Nathan’s shoulder. “I’m going to help you.”

Nathan pats Peter’s face again, that gesture having some resonance for him. He’s still Nathan, making his points with touches and looks.

“Sleep,” Peter says more forcefully. His healing can do this, make suggestions to the body, and Peter feels Nathan’s sudden need for sleep echoed in his own body. Nathan wants to sleep and wake up when everything is normal again. _It will never be normal . . ._

“I think I will,” says Nathan.

Peter waits until Nathan goes into the bedroom and he feels Nathan’s mind go quiet, deep sleep overtaking him. Peter follows after, sits down next to him on the bed, and puts his fingers on the sides of Nathan’s temples, like he did before, and tries to give the memories back, everything except the presidency. Let Nathan think he lost. But he can’t—they’re stuck there; the river only flows one way.

Nathan stirs in his sleep and Peter pulls his hand away. He blinks down into the courtyard—invisible, always invisible—to call Bennet.

“It’s done,” he tells Bennet. “I’ve taken care of the _problem_. Nathan won’t stand in your way.” He spits out the words. He can go there, find Bennet with nothing more than a thought, kill him with a thought too, but it won’t solve anything.

“How did you do it?” asks Bennet.

“I don’t have to tell you that.”

“You have to keep him gone, Peter. We can’t have him resurfacing.”

“I know.” Bennet doesn’t have to see Nathan’s blank eyes, hear confused thoughts. Peter runs his hand through his hair, spiking it up. He’ll have to teleport them somewhere remote when Nathan wakes up, where he won’t be recognized. Maybe Nathan can grow a beard.

“Peter,” said Bennet warningly.

“I’ve done my last favor for you,” says Peter. “Never again.” He hangs up the phone before Bennet can say anything else, repeat his threats against Nathan, and throws the phone against the outside wall of his apartment building hard enough to shatter. A foolish gesture, it does nothing to make him feel better. He could have told Nathan what Bennet wanted, stayed there with him to protect him. If Nathan had trusted him, if Peter hadn’t left in the first place . . . if.

Nathan needs him now, more than Peter ever needed him. Why couldn’t . . . _why couldn’t Bennet just have killed him and kept me out of it?_ , Peter thinks, and then hates himself for it.

He goes back into his apartment, picking up stray socks and stacking up magazines with his mind as he walks through. He does it automatically, hardly thinking about it, but then wonders if he should stop. He’ll have to get Nathan away from here, away from even seeing Candace as himself on TV, away from any reminders of who he used to be. The less Nathan knows about Peter or any of them right now, the better.

The Lower East Side has only grown trendier since Peter lived here, even part time. He hates what it’s become, too full of Long Island transplants who will move back there as soon as they find spouses, but the anonymity of it is helpful to him now. No one would suspect the rightful President of the United States is sleeping in Peter’s bed, especially not with Candace on TV, wearing Nathan’s face.

Peter reaches his mind out to Nathan again, and finds him still sleeping deeply. Nathan needed this—the sleep, not the amnesia—although maybe Nathan’s memories hold some absolution for that, too. Sometimes people want to forget; he read that buried wish in Nathan’s dreams when he fought with Heidi.

The memories sit there like a swamp in Peter’s mind, a dark lagoon he is afraid to explore. Images bubble to the surface when he prods at them: him and Nathan on the beach in Nantucket, a bonfire crackling against the dark, warming Nathan’s face as his back grew chilly; Nathan’s wedding: Heidi’s broad smile, her brilliant blue eyes, and in the background Peter’s desperate attempts to be happy for him; and Peter’s most recent goodbye, hardly a memory at all, except of Peter’s anger and sudden absence.

Peter skims over that first time, that morning when he crawled into bed with Nathan, that summer morning, golden-colored in Peter’s memory, when Peter was too young to know how badly he and Nathan could hurt each other, but no, there is something earlier than that. A thread of guilt runs through Nathan’s memories of Peter, so deep it can’t be separated from the whole, but there is joy there too.

The first thing Peter remembers, some time around age four, is tagging along after Nathan as he got ready for a date.

Nathan wore too much aftershave—their mom wrinkled her nose and said to Nathan, “Surely that’s not necessary.”

Nathan laughed and said, “Don’t call me Shirley,” in a rare good mood. Peter remembers his mother patting Nathan’s cheek, remembers watching out the bay window in the front parlor as Nathan drove off.

Nathan went to college not long after that. The few times Nathan visited, Peter trailed along after him, dragging a stuffed animal or a blanket, begging for a moment of Nathan’s attention. Peter would have followed Nathan around from dawn to dusk if Nathan had let him.

During Nathan’s eighteenth year he came once home for Christmas and then lived at home during the summer and grew tanned life-guarding at the local country club pool. The next year he visited friends during all the holidays, and Peter saw him even less.

He stayed up until midnight with Peter that Christmas at home and listened solemnly while Peter tried to justify his continuing belief in Santa Claus when all the other kids were giving up theirs.

Peter remembers Nathan carrying him home after midnight mass; somehow the soaring sounds of the carols echoing up to the high vaulted ceilings of the church are bound in Peter’s memory with the coolness of Nathan’s winter coat against his cheek, its black wool dotted with snowflakes.

He can’t see those memories from Nathan’s perspective, though; the memories he took start sometime when Peter was sixteen. In those memories, Nathan hearkens back to something earlier. Nathan’s memories, especially of Peter, don’t go in straight lines, but loop back on themselves.

For Nathan, one night is the beginning, marked and red-flagged in his memory, the moment when he starts assigning blame. It’s not surprising, in retrospect, that Nathan would think of it that way; it was the first tiptoe over the line that should have separated them.

 **New York, June 1993.**

The bushes and trees surrounding the Tavern on the Green were hung with Chinese lanterns, and carriages lined up in front of the restaurant to take the guests on free rides through the park. Peter’s aunt Marina was getting married in full Petrelli style, which meant a wedding that the _Times_ would not only announce but would send a report in the Style section as well.

Before the wedding Peter hung out in the bridal suite, sitting with his mother and the bride’s mother as they gave unwanted advice to her makeup artist. The room filled with the smell of hair heating under curling irons as Peter watched the bridesmaids go into their rooms wearing jeans and t-shirts and come out wearing long lilac gowns.

Then Nathan came and rescued him, a shining knight in a tuxedo, and took him to the groom’s suite. Peter wore a suit still, but wished he could wear a tuxedo too; Nathan looked like James Bond in his. Better than James Bond. He laughed when Peter told him that.

The groom distributed monogrammed silver flasks of vodka to the groomsmen, which they drank and then grimaced at the taste. Nathan let Peter have a taste and he grimaced too.

At the reception Peter watched Nathan dance with a succession of partners. He pulled Peter onto the dance floor to dance with their mother. The bride even danced with Peter at one point, and Mrs. Petrelli beckoned the photographer to come over and take a picture.

Peter sat back at his seat, eating wedding cake his mother left untouched when Nathan, guiding his partner though the measures of a Cole Porter song, caught his attention. Peter wasn’t sure why he noticed this particular girl. Nathan had danced with prettier girls throughout the night, with more brilliant plumage. Maybe it was something in Nathan’s expression when he danced with her, or the carefully casual way Nathan's hand lingered on the girl’s lower back, his thumb just grazing where the fabric stopped and bare skin started.

Peter wondered what the girl was feeling, if that languid promise in her smile meant what Peter’s instincts told him it did: something more than dancing, something secret and hidden that made Nathan’s lips curve with hers. Nathan seldom smiled except for Peter, as if he knew that would make people try all the harder to win something so rare.

The tempo of the music picked up again, and Nathan took the girl’s hand and led her off the dance floor. He saw Peter watching them, nodded a hello, and gave Peter the conspiratorial smile that Peter thought might be his alone. The smile he gave the girl then was different, more calculated, or perhaps just full of private thoughts that Peter wasn’t invited to share.

Nathan guided the girl in the direction of the French doors. Beyond lay the garden, full of little nooks and benches. There was no way Peter wasn’t going to follow or watch this. Nathan hadn’t precisely invited him, but he didn’t hide where he was going either, and as far as Peter was concerned then, a wink was as good as a nod. Any excuse to follow Nathan.

The straps of the girl’s dress were dangerously close to falling off her shoulders. Nathan took off his jacket. Peter imagined his hands brushing the skin of her back when he put it around her. She stumbled then laughed, high and brittle, as Nathan caught her against his body. She tipped her lips up to his, but Nathan said, “Just a little further,” and Peter marveled that Nathan could afford to brush that off. If some girl tried to kiss him, Peter didn’t plan on waiting for a better opportunity.

Nathan and the girl rounded a corner and her face was illuminated suddenly by one of the lanterns: high cheek bones and shadowed eyes giving her a look of sadness that surprised Peter. She wasn’t family, too elfin and light colored for that, but Peter thought maybe he’d seen her before, maybe at the rehearsal dinner. Then he heard Nathan call her “Ellen,” and remembered her as his cousin Jake’s girlfriend. Had Nathan thought twice about bringing her here, or was her willingness all the permission he needed?

They turned another a corner, Peter trailing a dozen steps behind. Shadowed by the boxwood was a low concrete bench. Ellen sat down on it and patted the spot next to her, but Nathan didn’t sit; he stood over her, and pushed his hands inside the coat over her shoulders, slipping the straps of her dress off. Peter could see Nathan's hand reach down to trace over her bare arm, and then caress a breast blocked from Peter’s view by her back.

Ellen started unbuttoning Nathan’s suspenders. She undid Nathan’s trousers and pushed them down over his hips. The suspenders fell off Nathan's shoulders and Peter heard the ends of them hit the ground behind Nathan.

Ellen looked up at the noise, but then Nathan’s hand wrapped around her face, cradling her chin. Peter certainly understood the concept of a blowjob—he’d seen pictures from friends’ dad’s porn magazines—and the act had figured in no few of his fantasies, but it was still a shock to see it actually happening. Some trick of the moonlight, or maybe just one of the floodlights from the Tavern, illuminated where Ellen’s lips met Nathan’s penis and made it shine wetly.

Peter imagined he could feel it himself—the warmth of her mouth against the cold outside air. He wondered if her lips gripped him tightly like a fist, or if it was it light and tantalizing? He glanced up from her mouth to Nathan’s face and got his answer; Ellen’s mouth wasn’t teasing, but insistent. Nathan’s eyes were closed, and one of his hands hovered over the back of Ellen’s head—not touching, just suspended there, while the other gripped her shoulder. Nathan’s face looked so different, slack and relaxed, his lips parted. He rocked forward to meet whatever Ellen was doing with her mouth.

Peter was painfully hard. He wanted to reach into his pants, and at least pretend he was feeling a little of what Nathan felt, but he couldn’t really imagine what it would be like to have a slick mouth around his dick instead of his sweaty hand, and it would be messy. Instead he watched, raptly, first looking at Ellen’s head moving up and down, in a slow, steady rhythm, but somehow that wasn’t as interesting as seeing Nathan react to it, watching Nathan’s face move in ways Peter had never seen before.

He heard Nathan say a low, “Yes. Like that.” Nathan closed his eyes tighter in what looked like concentration, and then put his hand on Ellen’s shoulder and gripped it tightly. Hot blood flooded Peter’s face as he watched. He knew he should leave—Nathan would see him. Following had been a mistake, but Peter was rooted in place, waiting to see what Nathan would do next.

“Thanks, Ellen,” said Nathan lightly. Peter mouthed the words back to himself. He was so casual, scarcely a hair out of place. “We should be getting back to the party.” He smiled, not nicely. “Jake will be missing you.” The words and tone were gentle enough, but Peter heard a note of triumph, something mean and hard behind them.

Nathan pulled up his trousers, tugged his suspenders over his shoulders and buttoned them. Ellen didn’t say anything, and Peter could see a sad droop in her eyelids when she turned her head to the side. Peter started to back away—he shouldn’t have been there; what Nathan was doing was wrong in a way Peter couldn’t even articulate. He didn’t want to see this side of his Nathan: the side that took and took and took, took everything that was offered and more as his due.

 _Maybe it was his due._ Nathan drew all things to him, why shouldn’t he have them? Peter turned back one more time, though, hoping he was wrong, that Nathan’s hand on Ellen’s shoulder was tender, not controlling, and that’s when Nathan saw him. Nathan barely reacted, but an unreadable expression flickered over his face, as if seeing Peter had decided something he’d been considering.

Peter ran back through the grove to the party, not caring this time if Nathan and Ellen heard his passing.

“You look flushed, Peter,” said his mother when she saw him. “You’re going to miss the toasts.”

“Do I get champagne?”

Mrs. Petrelli tipped her head to one side. “If you want some,” she said. “I think you’re old enough.” She smiled. “I remember when I first had champagne,” she said, her voice tinged with some happy memory, but then her face hardened again. “I’ll let the waiter know.” She moved away to speak with a waiter, and was then enveloped in some other conversation with family Peter didn’t know.

Peter felt a hand grip his upper arm, pressing into the flesh hard enough to hurt. “Peter,” said Nathan. “See anything interesting?”

Peter didn’t pretend not to know what Nathan meant. “Why her, Nathan?”

“She wanted to.”

“That’s all it takes?”

“Why should I stop her?” A flash of annoyance crossed Nathan’s face, and Peter knew that he was reacting wrong, somehow, to this, that Nathan showed him that scene between him and Ellen for some unfathomable reason, and Peter had ruined whatever point Nathan meant to make.

***

Nathan remembers it somewhat differently—Ellen faded to a blur, or wearing Meredith’s face—and woven into the pictures are questions: did he mean to have Peter follow him? He didn’t know, still doesn’t know. Perhaps part of him wanted to show Peter some cruel truth about their family. Meredith took Petrelli money to disappear, without telling Nathan where she’d gone. She’d left Angela to do that.

Ellen hadn’t deserved the punishment, but she’d been there to take it.

***

After the wedding, Nathan went back to Texas—Corpus Christi—and then a few months later to a battle carrier group. Peter’s tutor noticed him moping and suggested that Peter write his brother a letter, which Peter grudgingly did.

 _“Dear Nathan,”_ he wrote, the put the date in the upper right corner, like he’d been taught in writing composition. Peter used lined notebook paper. He had stationery given him by relatives who didn’t know how to shop for a fourteen year-old; it was either juvenile and covered with baseballs and footballs, or too adult, embossed with curlicues from another era.

Peter chewed his pencil and contemplated the “Dear” part. Nathan was bright and overwhelming, so much so that Peter almost had trouble remembering him when he was gone. He remembered instead that the months between seeing him stretched out too long, that the house was quiet and dull without him. “Dear” didn’t really describe what Peter felt.

Peter crossed out the “Dear” then wadded up the paper entirely and started on a new one.

 _“Nathan—How are you? Everything here is fine. Cousin Jake is getting married to Ellen. Mom probably told you that already. I don’t know if you talk to her, though. Can you call from a ship?_

 _“I passed the placement test to get into high school math this year, but it’s boring. Brody wants me to try out for the JV swim team, but Dad says I should do football like you did.”_

Peter chewed on the top of his pencil some more, enjoying the metallic taste of the end. His mom would scold him about it later; it scraped his teeth and was a tacky habit. He bit the end back into shape so maybe she wouldn’t notice.

 _“I like swimming because you’re on your own. In splendid solitude. Nice vocabulary, huh? I got an A on an English test this week.”_

 _Nathan won’t care about that,_ Peter thought. What would Nathan care about? What did Nathan think about?

 _“I went with Dad to one of the playoff games. The Yankees are doing well this year. I like being down in the seats where you took me, but Dad had clients so we were in one of the boxes. You can see the players better down on the field.”_

Girls. Nathan always asked him if he had a girlfriend. No one his age had a girlfriend. Maybe at parties some people would kiss. Brody always said that Missy, the fat girl, would give you a blow job if you asked her to, but Brody had a tendency to lie about things like that, and to repeat other people’s stories as if they had happened to him.

 _“There’s a girl named Alicia in my math class. She has blond hair and braces. Ken says she wants me to ask her to the eighth grade dance, but I don’t know.”_

Nathan wouldn’t know who any of those people were, so Peter added parenthetically, “Ken is Ken Mitchell who lives a few blocks down and has that big golden retriever that they never put on a leash. Brody is Brody Robinson who Mom used to be friends with his mom but they don’t see each other much anymore.

 _“I miss you, Nathan,”_ he added hastily, then signed his name and put it in an envelope and sealed it before he had a chance to erase that last line.

Nathan called a week later and asked for him. “I didn’t know you could call from the ship!” said Peter when his mother handed him the phone.

“You can, but I’m in Malta.” Peter didn’t know where that was, and he didn’t want to expose his ignorance by asking. “It’s in the Mediterranean,” Nathan added, perhaps hearing the question in Peter’s silence.

Peter pictured it, sun-drenched streets, Nathan in a white uniform, looking like something out of a World War II movie, or maybe _Top Gun_ , except no planes. Nathan had wanted to fly—Peter remembered the arguments with their father—but the commitment was too long, and Mr. Petrelli had other plans for him.

“Look, Pete, I wanted to tell you: you should ask that girl to the dance.”

“Alicia?”

“Yes.”

“What if she says no?”

Nathan laughed warmly, and Peter could picture that too, his straight, white teeth in his brilliant smile. “I bet she won’t.”

“What if . . .” Peter lowered his voice in case his mother was listening. “We both have braces.”

Nathan laughed again, and Peter felt himself smiling along. He didn’t quite follow the joke, but knew he’d made Nathan smile; Nathan who smiled so rarely when he was home was laughing halfway around the world for Peter. “That’s a load of crap, Pete. No one gets their braces stuck together.”

“Really?”

“I promise.”

***

After that, Peter gained confidence, both with girls and with writing to Nathan. He wrote to tell Nathan about the dance, about a kiss that did not entangle braces, and he told Nathan other things too, things he couldn’t tell anyone else, how their parents almost never spoke in front of Peter anymore, their low-voiced arguments in Mr. Petrelli’s study.

Nathan didn’t write or call for a while, but when he came home for Christmas he took Peter hiking in the Catskills. It took a long time to drive there from Larchmont. Peter watched the clouds tighten over the sky and block out the sun. A few desultory snowflakes fell, but the roads stayed dry.

Nathan seemed withdrawn, his silence not from his usual hauteur but from something deeper. They took a punishing route up the mountain, which required as much climbing as walking. Nathan pulled out a compass occasionally and pointed out the blue blazes on the trees that indicated their path. The sky and the trees were gray, a few dried yellow leaves clinging to the upper branches. They didn’t say much; Peter couldn’t while clambering over steep rocks, trying to keep up with Nathan’s longer legs, but something told him Nathan didn’t want to talk either.

They turned around on the top of a bluff that overlooked the Hudson valley. From up there Peter could see almost nothing manmade. The sound of a plane overhead, the Tappan Zee bridge in the distance, were all that told him humans had ever passed this way.

“Be careful with yourself,” Nathan said to him as they sat in a McDonald’s parking lot drinking hot coffee. He seemed reluctant to go home. “I don’t want to lose you.”

“Why would you lose me, Nathan?” Peter asked.

“Life is fragile,” said Nathan, but wouldn’t give any more explanation.

Peter kept his letters happier after that. He told Nathan about the starting the swim team in the winter season. He left out the part about how the girls’ team practiced with them, the silky feeling of bodies sliding past bodies, girls or boys. He definitely left out the part where one of the varsity swimmers, a dark haired, dark eyed boy, with silky black hairs on his thighs had _looked_ at Peter in the shower, and made his breath stop for a moment.

He hinted in his letters at how he’d started to chafe at his mother’s sudden neediness, but he didn’t want to make Nathan feel guilty, and he couldn’t put his finger on why it felt so strange not enough to articulate it to Nathan. Growing up, she’d shown Peter no more attention than seemed normal, but since she and his father started fighting more, and talking less, she made more demands on Peter’s time. After years of nannies and tutors and vacations that she and his father took alone, he'd enjoyed the extra attention at first.

Peter came home tired after swim practice, hair frozen by the winter winds, and he’d sit on the floor her in her sitting room, eating a plate of pasta, and talk with her. She listened, with an absent smile on her face, hands toying with her ring when he told her about swim practices, about shaving a half a second off his times.

Her eyes grew sharper when she talked, sometimes of politics, of dreams she’d had as a girl, always with oblique references to a history Peter didn’t understand.

“You are made to be loved, my dear,” Peter remembered his mother telling him, when he’d said something that she wanted to hear.

“What’s Nathan made for then?” Peter asked her.

“Nathan is made to lead.” She looked off into the distance, through walls, Peter thought, all the way to Texas where Nathan was a Navy lieutenant, leading already.

“I’d follow him,” said Peter loyally, puffing up with pride. That must be why Nathan was so hard to know, why he went so far ahead.

“Don’t.” She pulled him in close again and laid a kiss against his temple. He was the same height as her then, and perhaps that was the year they were the closest.

After that she seemed to realize she was putting too many emotional demands on him, and gave him the freedom to have a girlfriend and go to parties, without worrying about her jealousy when he returned. That was the year Nathan came back to New York for law school at Columbia.

“You’re all grown up, Pete,” said Nathan when they saw each other again.

Peter was sixteen and he’d started shaving to ward off the few long, scraggly hairs that shadowed his chin if he didn’t. He blushed and muttered, “Don’t call me Pete,” but Nathan just messed up his hair, before kissing him hello on the cheek, and calling him “Pete” whenever he wanted to.

Peter searches through Nathan’s memory for that meeting and finds nothing but a memory of his smile and his floppy hair. _No one smiles like Peter_ , Nathan thought then, _it comes from within_. So many of Nathan’s memories are like that, brighter islands of hope and tenderness than Peter imagined Nathan’s inner landscape would hold. Nathan keeps that part of himself well-hidden.

  
 **Nantucket, August 1996.**

The family spent the summer before Nathan’s first year of law school at their beach house in Nantucket. Mr. Petrelli joined them on the weekends from the work that kept him in the city. Their house was a few miles from town. Peter loved it for its imperfections: the crooked stairs, the uneven floors and the creaks the boards made as the house settled at night. The Larchmont house was new construction, without flaw; the Nantucket house felt like a home.

Peter begged and pleaded and was allowed to sleep in the attic room. It felt like a secret place, accessible only by a ladder going down into Nathan’s room below. The attic’s garret window had a view of the long grass fields leading down to the ocean.

He watched from that window when Nathan finally arrived, after a few weeks with college friends, a few days after Peter and his mother drove up. Peter leapt down the ladder, barking his knees on it, then ran down the porch stairs and out to greet him.

After Peter helped Nathan bring his suitcase up to his room, Nathan pulled their old bicycles out of storage shed and greased up the chains. Peter followed him around the island, along wooden paths over the marshes by the shore then jittering over the cobblestone roads through the main town. They veered around traffic going into the yacht club and raced a seaplane flying overhead.

They bought lobsters for dinner at a road side stand and Nathan showed Peter how to cook them in a huge aluminum pot. The water took hours to come to a boil on the stove. They spread out newspapers on the kitchen table, cracked the lobsters with their hands, and dipped the meat in paper cups of melted butter.

After dinner their hands were covered with bits of lobster and a greasy sheen of butter, so he and Nathan went running into the ocean to clean off. Peter chased after Nathan, trying to pull him under, but Nathan had a clean, efficient crawl, and he sped ahead of Peter out into the open water.

“No fair,” called Peter after Nathan was too far away. It wasn’t—Peter was a very good swimmer; he should have been able to beat Nathan at this, if only this.

After the sun set they lit a bonfire on the beach, and lay out on blankets, looking at stars Peter could never see from New York. Peter lay next to Nathan, shoulders and arms touching, as the stars turned slowly overhead. “You’re staying now?” he asked. “Not going back to Texas?”

“I’m done with Texas,” said Nathan flatly. Peter could feel Nathan’s shoulder tense.

“Good. I missed you.”

Nathan kissed him on the temple and said offhandedly, “I missed you too, man. Think it’s time for bed?”

“No,” said Peter with a yawn, but Nathan had already stood up to put out the fire and gather their things.

When they came in their mother was sitting on the couch in the living room, at the open picture windows, staring at the moonlit storm clouds gathering on the horizon. “You go on ahead, Pete,” said Nathan.

“I’m pleased that you’re spending time with him, Nathan,” Peter heard her say when she was halfway up the stairs. Her voice sounded anything but pleased. Peter sat down on the top step to listen.

“He’s a good kid,” said Nathan.

“Don’t.” His mother sighed. “I don’t want to pick up the pieces when you disappear again.”

“Ma,” said Nathan, exasperated. “Dad wanted me to join the navy. I didn’t ‘disappear.’” She made an indefinable noise somewhere between disbelief and frustration. Peter heard Nathan walking toward the stairs and quickly turned to go into Nathan’s room and climb the ladder up to the attic.

“Thin walls in this house,” said Nathan as Peter pulled his legs up into the attic from the top rungs of the ladder.

“Yeah,” said Peter. “G’night, Nathan.”

***

The sun woke Peter early. He climbed down the ladder to sneak through Nathan’s room and downstairs to have a pre-breakfast bowl of cereal, but before he reached the door, he glanced over at Nathan, who had flung the sheets half off and slept with his arm up, framing his face. His eyelashes painted thick black lines on his cheek. His hair was growing out from its military cut, and was mussed and touchable from the ocean salt.

 _Soft and pretty_ , Peter thought. Sleep made Nathan look years younger, but then he frowned and his face grew more masculine again. Peter wondered what he was dreaming about.

Peter crept closer. Nathan’s dream faded and his face went slack again. He looked so warm and relaxed now that Peter decided to climb under the sheets next to him, maybe to wake him up and entice him for an early morning swim. Nathan was _his_ now, although only for this week, and Peter wanted to make the most of it. On Friday their father would come, and Nathan would be caught up in long conversations about his future, current events, the stock market, a million and one things Peter didn’t care about.

Nathan’s deodorant or whatever cologne he wore was faded in the morning and he smelled like nothing more than himself: warm skin in clean sheets. Peter stole a quick kiss from his shoulder and tasted the salt of his skin, still lingering from their night swim in the ocean.

Nathan turned in his sleep and wrapped his arm around Peter, and Peter curled within its circle, his head tucked in the curve of Nathan’s neck. He’d crawled into bed with Nathan before, when they were much younger, but it hadn’t been like this. Now he noticed how still and calm Nathan was in his sleep, without the precise but restless energy that animated him in his waking hours. He kissed Nathan again, this time on his neck. It also tasted of salt.

Nathan’s fingers moved on Peter’s lower back, tracing slow patterns, making his stomach flutter. He pressed himself close to Nathan, the full length of his body against Nathan’s, Peter’s smooth chest against the soft hairiness of Nathan’s, warm legs laced together. Nathan’s morning hard-on pressed against Peter’s stomach.

Peter’s mouth went dry. This was intimate, too intimate; he shouldn’t be here. He started to pull away, slide out of Nathan’s arms without waking him, when Nathan made a sound, a word too blurred by sleep for Peter to understand, but somehow it held him there anyway. Nathan’s breath warmed the side of his neck, and slowly Peter relaxed again.

Nathan turned slightly, rolling toward Peter. His thigh pressed against Peter’s groin, making him tense again. He flushed. He glanced up at Nathan’s face and saw his eyes were still closed, his breathing still even, but shallower than it had been when Nathan was deep in sleep.

Experimentally, Peter reached down and put his palm against Nathan’s cock through the fabric of his boxers, not moving it, simply resting it there. He breathed shallowly, waiting for he didn’t know what: Nathan to wake and push him away, Nathan to wake and push Peter’s head down _please that, please_.

Nathan moved slightly; Peter could tell he was near wakefulness. Peter shifted up and put his lips to Nathan’s cheek; it was so warm, so everything he wanted.

“Peter,” Nathan murmured. Peter froze, but Nathan’s voice was gentle, a half-asleep caress of his name that Peter took as permission. He curled his hand around Nathan’s cock through the fly of his boxers and nuzzled Nathan’s neck again, this time sucking harder and enjoying how his teeth and tongue made Nathan stiffen further in his hand.

Then Nathan drew his hand up Peter’s back to the nape Peter’s neck, and traced his lips over Peter’s so sensuously that it left Peter gasping and half-frightened of its intensity, but he wasn’t going to stop now. He fitted his own dick against Nathan’s and rubbed them both together with his hand around them. It sent a white hot shock down Peter’s spine when they touched, like a dream-memory finally coming to life. Nathan’s fingers stroked along the side of Peter’s neck, too insistent to be soothing.

Nathan, eyes still closed, bent to kiss Peter’s neck where his fingers had been, stinging bites that seemed to travel straight to Peter’s cock. Peter concentrated his strokes on Nathan rather than himself; Nathan wasn’t as hard, and Peter wanted him to come so much, wanted to feel Nathan spill over his hand, or his lips. Anywhere.

Nathan’s hips moved slightly, and Peter took the motion as a guide. He knew Nathan’s rhythm because it was his own, the same speed he’d been practicing for years, after watching Nathan at the wedding, but sharper, harder, more _Nathan_ somehow. Nathan bit down on Peter’s lip and tightened his grip around Peter’s ass as Peter came over his hand, slicking both of them.

“Nathan,” Peter murmured. Nathan’s hips moved in time with Peter’s hand, and Peter didn’t know which he wanted to watch more, Nathan’s cock sliding in and out of his wet fingers, or Nathan’s face, wearing same expressions Peter remembered from the wedding, his mouth open and needy. Peter watched Nathan’s face as his breath started coming fast and shallow.

“Yes,” breathed Nathan, digging his fingers into Peter’s arm to stop the motion of his hand when he suddenly opened his eyes and looked at Peter. Peter pulled his hand away and jumped back, but Nathan was already shoving Peter off of him.

“Peter,” he said, in a tone of voice Peter had never heard from him before. “Get out of here.”

Peter gave him one look, hurt by the rejection, and ran down the stairs, still naked and half-hard, tugged on the swim trunks that were drying over the side of the porch and ran out to the ocean. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The memory of Nathan’s face before Peter left made him feel sick to his stomach, but he couldn’t regret it. No matter what Nathan might say in the light of day, he’d wanted it too.

Nathan’s memories contain that scene too, etched in different colors than Peter’s golden ones. After Peter left his bed Nathan finished himself off with a few short strokes, trying to think of anything but Peter. Nathan’s mind kept returning to the night before, the lazy arousal from relaxing on the beach, Peter pressed against him, how he should have stopped it even then.

***


	2. Chapter 2

“You know why that was wrong,” said Nathan when he found Peter, shivering with cold and exhaustion, but still swimming along the shore a few hours later. The sun glinting off the water hurt Peter’s eyes, and he knew he’d be sunburned later, but that didn’t matter. Nathan had come for him. “Come on, you’ll make yourself sick.”

“I love you, Nathan,” said Peter, stubborn. He put some more speed into his swimming and started to pull away from Nathan. Nathan grabbed onto Peter’s ankle and held him until he splashed under and got a mouthful of saltwater.

Peter flailed his arms and kicked until Nathan let go and they both stood in the chest-high water. “What the fuck, Nathan? Are you trying to drown me?”

“No, you seem to be trying to drown yourself.”

Peter put his arms around Nathan’s neck, then, and let Nathan pull him out of the water. They sat on the beach, where the tide was coming in. It washed over Nathan’s toes and then Peter’s as the minutes passed. The sun was halfway up in the sky. It drove away the chill, leeching out his uncertainty and confusion until he wanted nothing more than to fall asleep here next to Nathan.

“Forget it happened, Pete.” Nathan ruffled Peter’s drying hair. “No harm done.”

“You said my name.” He ran his fingers through the sand and watched it well up over them rather than look at Nathan. Nathan’s long toes pushed up from where his feet had sunk into the beach as the tide came in. His calves were strong and hairy. Peter didn’t dare look higher.

“It was nothing,” said Nathan. “I thought it was a dream.”

“A dream of me.”

“No.” He looked at Peter until Peter had to look back. “Nothing happened,” he said, widening his eyes. He put his hand on Peter’s shoulder and squeezed to make his point, as he’d always done, but the contact felt different now; Peter wanted to melt under it. “Nothing happened.” Nathan sounded like a less certain version of their father, when he swept something under the rug, glossing over a disappointment until only a polished veneer of perfection remained.

“Yeah, right,” said Peter, but Nathan pretended not to hear him.

He followed Nathan back to the house and took a nap on the sun porch. Their father came in late that evening instead of Friday night, and Peter sat on the stairs again, listening to him and Nathan talk about Nathan’s future, the place in his firm that Mr. Petrelli had ready and waiting for him, the high profile cases that would make up Nathan’s clientele when he graduated and joined.

“Pa, I haven’t even started classes yet,” he heard Nathan say, following the clink of ice into a lowball glass. He couldn’t hear Mr. Petrelli pour the scotch but he imagined he could smell it, the pungent smokiness that would be on Nathan’s lips later.

“You’ll be brilliant. I know it.”

Peter stood up and went into Nathan’s room, but instead of climbing the ladder up to his, he sat on the edge of Nathan’s bed and drew his knees up to his chest. Outside the window he could see the moon, nearly full, shining on the fields of grass along the beach. Clouds ringed the moon, and when Peter squinted it went misty and rainbow-edged in his vision.

He was still looking out the window, chin resting on his knees when Nathan came in. “Hey, Pete,” he said too casually. Now Peter could smell the scotch on him. “You okay?” He sat down next to Peter and put his arm around Peter’s shoulders.

Peter turned to him and reached out, brushing his thumb along Nathan’s lower lip and then putting it in his mouth. “Yuck.”

Nathan pressed his lips together. “No taste for scotch, huh?”

“Maybe I’ll learn.”

He leaned his face toward Nathan’s and Nathan pulled away. “No, Peter.”

“I missed you,” said Peter. “Every time you left.” He wrapped his hand around the back of Nathan’s neck and felt the pulse beating under his thumb, faster than normal. Nathan’s muscles bunched under the skin, ready to push Peter away again. He was strong; he could hurt Peter, but Peter didn’t think he would.

“Peter, Ma and Pa are downstairs.” He put his hand on Peter’s chest and pushed, but gently, much more gently than he needed to, and Peter shivered at the contact.

“I want to, Nathan, and you want to, too.” He pressed his hand between Nathan’s legs where he was already hard, harder than Peter.

Peter could see Nathan’s throat move as he swallowed. “Tell me to stop.”

“Stop,” said Nathan, voice soft.

Peter pressed his lips to Nathan’s throat. He felt drunk on power now, realizing that Nathan wanted this even more than he did. “Say it again.”

“I bet the girls don’t stand a chance against you.” Nathan sounded sardonic now, trying to distance Peter even as his hand held Peter there.

Peter shrugged. He didn’t want to think about girls right now. This was not about that, this was barely in the same universe as that.

He pushed Nathan back on the bed, and Nathan lay there as Peter pushed up his shirt. His hands were clenched in fists, but he didn’t move, barely even breathed as Peter kissed down his chest, lingering and biting where Nathan’s stomach met his hipbone.

Nathan made a sound of protest when Peter started undoing his khaki shorts and sliding them off, but Peter didn’t stop and Nathan fell silent when Peter licked a stripe down Nathan’s cock. He felt it jump up toward him and smiled when it rested against his lips. He’d been imagining how this worked since he saw Ellen do it at that wedding.

Nathan’s cock tasted perfect; the salty drop of pre-come on the tip, the smooth largeness of it filled Peter’s mouth, sliding over his tongue to the back of his throat. Nathan made strangled noises and when Peter looked up he could see Nathan’s hands grasping at the sheets instead of clenched in fists. The curls of Nathan’s hair brushed against Peter’s nose. He traced the lines of Nathan’s cock with his tongue, the veins and seams of flesh, learning them, remembering what made Nathan gasp.

Peter was hard where he pressed against the mattress and he lifted his hips, and rubbed himself against it as he caught Nathan’s cock between his lips and rubbed his tongue over the head. One of Nathan’s hands kneaded Peter’s shoulder and the other hovered over Peter’s head, coming to rest in his hair at odd intervals. _Do it,_ Peter thought at him, _show me how it works._

Peter started sucking in earnest, letting the pressure build, listening to the soft, pleading groan that Nathan made when he was all the way out of Peter’s mouth. Nathan said his name, not warning this time, or asleep, but demanding. His cock thickened, stretching Peter’s lips, and then Nathan put his hand on Peter’s shoulder to hold Peter there, as he spurted into Peter’s mouth, hot and salty-sour and _Nathan_. Peter swallowed, wrinkling his nose at the unaccustomed taste. He sat up between Nathan’s legs, licked his lips and wiped his mouth off with the back of his hand.

He rocked back on his heels and looked at Nathan tentatively. He wanted Nathan’s lips on him again, Nathan’s hands and body pressing him into the mattress. He wanted Nathan to tell him what to do and make him do it, the feel the calluses on Nathan’s fingers in every part of him.

“God, Peter, I want to . . .” said Nathan, and Peter’s stomach flip-flopped. The expression on his face was more naked than any Peter had ever seen him wear: accusation and longing, a worried crease in his forehead as his eyes tracked Peter’s movements. Nathan reached out and ran his hand down Peter’s back, fingers skimming over the skin, leaving a shiver behind them, but then he pulled back. “Go to bed, Peter,” he said, quiet but firm. Peter looked at his face and didn’t argue.

He climbed up the ladder on legs gone shaky and jerked off in bed, thinking about Nathan’s hands and eyes on him, not troubling to hide the noises he made.

Nathan left to go back to the city before Peter woke up the next morning. Peter spent the weekend swimming and fantasizing about Nathan.

  
 **Larchmont, New York, Winter 1996.**

Peter did well his senior year, swimming at the state championships in Albany and graduating with a solid B+ average. He wondered what happened to the gorgeous senior swimmer from a few years before, wondered if he was the object of someone else’s fantasy now, but the thought didn’t appeal to him. He wanted Nathan and only Nathan.

Christmas Eve after rum-soaked eggnog and coffee with sambuca and far too many cookies, Peter followed Nathan up to his room. “Nathan, you can’t just ignore me forever,” he said, leaning his head on the door frame.

“What do you suggest, Peter?” Nathan asked.

Peter walked into the room. “Talk to me. Tell me about Law School. Tell me about the great and terrible future Dad has planned for you.”

Nathan raised his eyebrows. “Great and terrible?”

“We’re studying Russian history in school right now.”

Nathan smiled and looked up at the ceiling. “Any cute girls?”

Peter rolled his eyes. “Yeah, some.” He blushed. “Lots,” he said, thinking not of the girls, but of what he imagined when he was with them.

“Don’t get anyone pregnant,” said Nathan.

“Nathan!” Nathan smiled knowingly. “I wouldn’t,” Peter assured him.

“Okay.” Nathan punched him lightly on the shoulder, a strange gesture for him. “Just looking out for you.”

“Now you are,” said Peter. “Whenever you feel like it, right?”

“Come on, Peter,” said Nathan under his breath. “What could I do? You weren’t listening to reason.”

“You didn’t stop me.”

Nathan pulled Peter into his room and closed the door. “I tried to.”

“Not very hard.” He took the step that brought his face within a few inches of Nathan’s and kissed him on the lips, open-mouthed and sloppy. For a moment Nathan kissed him back, tongue invading Peter’s mouth and making his mind go blank with desire, but then he pushed Peter away.

“Peter, this . . .” He wiped off his mouth. “This is sick. We’re not doing this again. You have to promise not to.” Peter could hear the desperation underlying Nathan’s command voice, but also the unspoken threat: Nathan would take himself away from Peter, they wouldn’t know each other, he wouldn’t even get the everyday brotherly contact he craved. A little or nothing was the choice Nathan offered.

“I get it, Nathan,” he said, pitching his voice low, so it wouldn’t embarrass him by breaking. “I’m going.”

 **New York, January 2011.**

Peter sits in his dusty armchair and watches the news on TV with the sound turned down. Candace-Nathan takes questions, introducing her newly appointed Liaison for Post-Human affairs, Dr. Noah Bennet. Peter snorts and wonders what university issued that degree, and which brain trust came up with that title.

He hears Candace-Nathan mention Dr. Suresh and turns up the volume. “ . . . Dr. Mohinder Suresh, son of noted geneticist Dr. Chandra Suresh is calling into question all we know about humanity. This is a moment of incredible opportunity for our country and the world.

“Today, I make a promise, a promise to the nation, and a promise to myself. No laws will ever be passed that allow discrimination on the basis of genetic make-up. One of my colleagues will be introducing an amendment to the Constitution to Congress on Tuesday, and I urge every representative to support it. It is our nation’s destiny to reach for greater and greater freedom. Today we take another step down that hallowed path.”

“He’s not taking any questions right now,” said the anchor when they cut back. “We have Dana Milbank, the author of _President by Mistake_ in the studio with us. Tell us, what does this speech mean to his presidency?”

“Pundits on both sides of this issue are certain this vote will be a contentious one. It’s unheard of to propose an amendment like this before an issue has been thoroughly researched. My sources in the White House say they had no idea the President was planning this. As you recall, President Petrelli has been firmly middle-of-the road up until now. Without being elected, he’s had to tread carefully.”

“Yes, you point that out in your book. Do you think this represents a change in course for this president?”

“I don’t know why, Keith, but it looks like the days of treading carefully are over.”

Peter hears Nathan stir in the bedroom and turns off the TV with a thought. He fills a glass with water and brings it to Nathan. “President Petrelli?” Nathan asks as he sits up. “Did I hear that right?” He cracks a smile. “I always thought Mom would make a good President.”

Peter has to smile at that as well. “Good? You think?” Who knows what she might have been like if she’d been exercising her power directly all this time, instead of from behind various thrones.

Somewhere deep in his mind, Peter can feel Nathan turning over other possibilities, and the suspicion that keeps him from asking outright. “Fifteen years,” Nathan says. He rubs his forehead and frowns; he’s feeling lines he didn’t have before, the texture of his skin roughened by the passage of time.

He pulls his hand away and sees the wedding band on his left hand, a mate to the Princeton ring he still wears on his right. “I’m married.”

“Separated.”

Nathan presses his lips together and closes his eyes. “I don’t remember. Do you have a picture of her?” The bitterness of his parting with Meredith is still fresh in this Nathan’s mind, mixed with hope that they might have reconciled.

Nathan’s wedding album is on the bookshelf across the room. Peter hesitates for a moment—the less Nathan knows the easier it will be . . . _to control him_. Peter puts that out of his mind and instead grabs album off the shelf, floating it into his hands. Nathan’s eyes widen, but then he blinks and Peter hears him dismiss it from his mind, as a trick of his faulty memory, some kind of hallucination. He hands the album to Nathan gingerly.

Nathan sees the picture of himself and Heidi together on the cover. “I always date blondes,” he says, half to himself. He traces a finger over Heidi’s face. “She’s pretty, though.” He looks at Peter sharply. “Do I have any other—do I have kids?”

“Two. She . . . I don’t think you see them much.”

“Why did we separate?”

Peter looks away. If he wants to, he can see that fight now; it’s an ugly scar on Nathan’s memory. “Nathan . . . I don’t know the details.”

Nathan grabs Peter’s forearm, tightening painfully, grinding muscle into bone. “You _know_. Tell me,” he adds, voice low and serious. Peter is still used to obeying that voice, that expression, part of him wants to give Nathan whatever he wants. He’s asking about more than just Heidi, Peter can feel it—suspicions Nathan doesn’t want to voice even to himself. “Peter, what _happened_ to me?”

“I don’t know, Nathan.” True. He doesn’t know the full reasons behind Bennet’s threat, but he can guess. “I’m going to try to find out. Someone’s after you, Nathan. I know that much. You have to stay here, inside.”

“Why would anyone be after me? I’m just a first Lieutenant . . .” The connection is so close now, just on the edge of Nathan’s conscious thoughts. _President Petrelli. President Nathan Petreilli._ Peter reaches out—to make Nathan sleep more, or to take . . . no, he can’t keep erasing Nathan’s memory—Claire told him what it did to her mother, her adopted mother, how she died. Better to kill Nathan now as Bennet suggested, than do that to him.

But he can make Nathan sleep again. He touches Nathan with his power—his _healing_ power—and flips Nathan back into a dreamless sleep. He looks younger in sleep, almost as young as he still imagines himself.

  
 **New York, June 1997.**

Peter took his AP tests in May and spent June with nothing to do, classes where the teachers let them watch movies, or skip entirely. A few weeks before graduation, Nathan invited Peter to stay over at his apartment for the weekend to get to know the city before he started at NYU. Nathan lived in the only high-rise in Chelsea. The building stood tall and out of place among the tenement-style houses, but the Petrellis owned it, so Nathan used an untenanted apartment there.

They went to a Yankee game on Saturday afternoon and sat five rows up from home plate. Nathan bought hotdogs and beers and they talked about Steinbrenner’s stupidity, Andy Pettitte’s clean-up pitching, and Jeter’s annoying popularity with girls who barely understood the game.

After the game, Peter took a nap in Nathan’s bed while Nathan studied in the living room. The sheets smelled like that morning in Nantucket, and Peter fell asleep breathing it in, drifting lazily through the memories of that day. He woke rested and thirsty, took a shower, and borrowed some of Nathan’s clothes. Nathan’s closet was well-organized, suits and chaste white shirts on one side, more interesting choices, even some striped shirts on the other. Peter’s shoulders didn’t quite fill out the width of the shirts, and the jeans fell a few inches too long over his shoes, but he wasn’t as far from Nathan’s size as he’d once been.

Nathan took him to dinner at the Old Homestead Steakhouse. Over dinner Nathan asked what Peter might study at NYU, and told him a few revealing stories about his own college days—not the tales of football heroism and a 4.0 GPA that Peter was used to hearing, but instead of his loneliness his first year at Princeton, things he wished he’d done differently. It made Peter feel close to him and then momentarily suspicious; too often Nathan bestowed this kind of intimacy only to take it away again.

“Got any advice for my first year, then?” Peter asked, as the waiters cleared the plates away. Nathan slipped his credit card into the leather sleeve for the bill. His shirt fit closely and pulled open when he leaned back in his chair.

“Live on campus,” said Nathan wryly. Peter swallowed hard and looked away from the tan skin of Nathan’s neck.

“Dad got me an apartment in your building.”

“Mmmm,” said Nathan, distracted. “We should get going.”

They met up with Nathan’s friends at a crowded little dive in the Village. Peter watched heads turn as Nathan walked through the crowded bar area, the patrons moving aside to give him space and looking at him longer than they had to.

“This doesn’t seem like your kind of place,” said Peter over the noise.

“It’s not,” said Nathan. He tipped his chin up at a good-looking group at the end of the bar. “But they like slumming.” Nathan freed a bar stool for Peter and leaned across him to order a couple of beers. His chest brushed against Peter’s side.

Nathan introduced Peter to the group, most of who smiled brightly at him for a moment, but then turned back to their conversations. One caught Peter’s eye with a conspiratorial grin: Dylan, a slight boy that Peter judged to be just a few years out of college, the youngest of the crowd. He started talking to Peter about movies, and Peter didn’t notice when they slid away from the rest of the crowd, and formed their own little bubble of conversation, facing each other on their bar stools, Dylan’s knees between his own.

Peter put his hand on the bar and played with one of the coasters and Dylan talked about his three older brothers back in California, the pro-bono law he wanted to do. He felt a pleasurable shiver when Dylan put his hand over Peter’s and stroked the skin deliberately with his thumb.

“How old are you?” Dylan asked when the bartender was far enough away she could pretend not to care if Peter was underage.

“Eighteen,” said Peter.

“Young,” said Dylan. “But not too young.” Peter felt his face heat, and he fought the urge to grin stupidly. “You’re even better looking than your brother.” Peter started to frame a denial—no one was better-looking than Nathan—but Dylan took Peter’s chin between his fingers and kissed him, just lips grazing lips, and then pulled away. “I’d like to see you again, Peter Petrelli.”

Peter swallowed. Dylan was lovely, and Peter liked the promise in his lips, his hands, the promise of more excitement than from any high school girl. “I’d like that,” he said.

Dylan put his hand on Peter’s knee and played with the fabric there. Peter’s mouth went dry as Dylan moved up his leg, inch by slow inch.

He was caught up in wondering what Dylan would do next when Nathan grabbed his shoulder and wrenched him around. Peter stumbled to his feet, the bar stool skittering across the floor away from him. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Peter?” Nathan asked in a venomous undertone that made everyone around them pull away.

“Making a date,” said Peter. He looked over at Dylan for confirmation, but Dylan had disappeared.

Nathan grabbed Peter by the elbow and hauled him out onto the street. A gaggle of smokers were lingering outside. Nathan tugged Peter down a side street, until they stood in the shadow of a row house, away from anyone who could hear.

“Do you have any idea how this makes me look?”

“What the fuck are you talking about, Nathan?” Peter asked loudly, although he knew quite well. He and his mother were extensions of the Petrelli family, mirrors and accessories for Nathan and their father. Unless Peter grabbed a piece of the spotlight for himself. “I like Dylan. He’s cute. If I want to go out with someone, I don’t see that it’s any of your business.”

“It is my business. You’re my brother. He’s my friend.”

“So what, Nathan? You afraid of people knowing your brother likes guys?”

“That’s what . . .” Nathan took a deep breath. “That’s what that was about. You’re gay. Okay, I get it.”

“That’s what _what_ was about? You think . . .” Peter dropped his voice to a whisper. “You think that’s what it was about with me. That’s why I . . .” He reached out to Nathan, put his hand on Nathan’s shoulder and slid it up his neck. Nathan looked at him accusingly, his jaw working under Peter’s fingers.

“Nathan, I’m here if you want me. No matter what.” He slid his thumb over Nathan’s jaw line. “I never wanted to stop.” He kissed Nathan’s lips. Nathan didn’t kiss him back, but he didn’t resist either. Peter put his lips to Nathan’s ear and kissed the skin under it and said, “Take me back to your apartment and fuck me, Nathan. I want it. You want it.”

Nathan swallowed hard. The sound of laugher from the bar carried toward them. “I should . . .”

“You need to take your drunk little brother home. They’ll understand.”

“Are you, Peter? Drunk?”

Peter pulled Nathan in for another kiss. “No,” he said. “Not drunk. Just . . . want you.” He saw Nathan swallow hard.

He pushed Peter away, gently, and Peter’s heart sank until he said, “Come on, Peter, I’m taking you home.” They didn’t talk in the cab, but Peter leaned his head on Nathan’s shoulder and drew patterns on Nathan’s thigh with his fingertips.

Nathan kissed Peter back when the door to his apartment closed behind them, pressed him up against the wall and started pulling at Peter’s clothes, unbuttoning his shirt and pushing it down over one shoulder so he could kiss Peter there. “I’m not going to fuck you,” he said, leaving the “but” unspoken.

They tumbled together, naked on Nathan’s bed. Nathan bit Peter’s neck hard enough to sting. His fingers dug into Peter’s arms so he could feel their pressure after Nathan moved his hands away, lower, pulling off Peter’s jeans. His hand around Peter’s dick was a revelation: hard and callused where Peter was used to his own chlorine-softened fingers. Peter thrust into Nathan’s hand in a clumsy rhythm as Nathan kissed him, hard and invasive.

Peter felt like he was drowning but not dying, nothing else in his universe but Nathan’s hand around him, Nathan’s lips on his, Nathan’s tongue in his mouth. He stroked Peter until Peter came all over his hand, and then he pushed Peter’s head down, guiding Peter’s lips around his cock, making Peter swallow as much as he could.

He wrapped his hands around Nathan’s thighs and felt them tense as he brought Nathan close to the edge, rolling the skin of Nathan’s cock over his tongue, tasting what he’d been missing for far too long.. Nathan tangled his fingers through Peter’s hair and called Peter’s name when he came.

“Nathan, please,” said Peter, afterwards. “I want it so much.”

“You have a flattering opinion of my stamina.” Nathan’s voice was flat. “Go to sleep, Pete.”

In the morning Nathan woke Peter with kisses over already tender and scraped skin, curving his hand along Peter’s ass and letting his fingers graze into the cleft. It made Peter shiver with anticipation.

“When?” asked Peter. Nathan’s fingers teased along the sensitive skin. “Please, Nathan.” He’d worn Nathan down with begging before; maybe he could do it now.

“Where did you learn to talk like that?” Nathan asked, lips brushing Peter’s face as he spoke.

“Like what?”

“On the street last night, asking me to . . .” He looked at Peter significantly.

“Asking you to fuck me? How else would I say it?” He pressed back against Nathan’s fingers. “Please, Nathan.” Nathan pulled his hand away and pushed Peter back onto the bed.

“How about for a graduation present?” Peter asked after sucking Nathan off again, when he looked his most relaxed and pliable. “I want this more than I want a new computer.”

Nathan gave him an incredulous look, but a smile played on the edges of his lips. “And that’s a good enough reason?”

“ _I_ think so.”

Nathan gave him money for the train, and Peter put on his clothes. He looked at himself in the mirror before he went turned off the light in the bathroom. His eyelids were heavy. His mouth was bruised and red, his hair mussed. He looked _used_. He liked it.

***

His mother insisted that Peter have a graduation party. “It’s not for you, Peter,” she said when he pleaded with her to cancel it. He didn’t feel particularly accomplished; this party would just show him as the pale shadow of Nathan that he knew he was, that their father knew he was.

Nathan graduated with football scholarship offers from half a dozen schools, but chose Princeton anyway. He led Princeton’s football team as quarterback for its winningest four years in recent history. Peter was a better than average swimmer, but no one was beating down his door for that.

“It’s for family friends who have seen you grow up.” She sniffed. “Scott Bainbridge is crab fishing in Alaska this summer, isn’t he?”

It seemed like a non sequitur but Peter could follow the connection she made from Peter’s successes, such as they were, to the failures of her friends’ children. “Nathan will be there,” she added.

“I see. You want to show him off,” said Peter. “Why not just say that?”

“I’m proud of both of you,” she said. “The party is on the 30th. We can make it a picnic, if you like.”

A picnic meant red tablecloths instead of white over the rented tables under a rented tent in the backyard. A picnic meant more beer than wine, but still a full bar, and waiters without jackets. The women wore sundresses and the men wore summer-weight suits with no ties, but it was still too formal for Peter.

Nathan wore a light gray suit over a thin white shirt, thin enough that Peter could see the dark patterns that the hair on his chest made under the material. Their mother sent Peter up to his room to change a few times before giving his outfit her blessing.

“I need a suit like that,” said Peter, deadpan, finding Nathan after accepting congratulations and envelopes of cash from the guests. “Then we could be twins.” Nathan glanced at Peter warningly, but three beers down gave Peter an excuse not to care.

“Hey, you think if we were twins then Dad might have toasted me along with you?” Peter asked.

“He’s proud of you. He just doesn’t know how to show it.” Nathan wasn’t even trying to sell it, just mouthing the words they’d all been saying for so long.

“You’re a shitty liar. And I’m not stupid.”

“I don’t think you are.” He put his arm around Peter’s shoulder, big-brotherly and friendly. “Dad notices people who are useful to him.”

“You’re the heir, I’m the spare,” said Peter. But he didn’t really want to make Nathan feel guilty. “Tell me about your graduation party. Was it this bad?”

“When you open those envelopes tomorrow you won’t mind so much.”

“So, I’m getting paid for this? Doesn’t that make me kind of a whore?” At Nathan’s look Peter smiled apologetically. “God, I’m a mess tonight. Sorry, Nathan. You think she’ll notice if I just sneak off?”

“Yes. She offered to invite your friends. Why didn’t you let her?”

“And make them suffer too?” Peter’s real friends were more like Scott Bainbridge than the people his mom would have wanted him to invite. Peter liked his classmates who had dreams of their own, separate from their parents’.

“I’ll make your excuses, if you want.” They meandered into a secluded part of the back garden, and the noise of the party receded to an indefinable clamor behind them. This part of the garden was lit by Chinese lanterns that reminded Peter of the wedding at Tavern on the Green. He smiled to himself, and wondered if he could persuade Nathan to reenact the blowjob in the garden when Nathan interrupted his train of thought.

“Call it a graduation present.”

“A graduation present,” echoed Peter.

“Peter, you know I can’t . . .” said Nathan, coming around to face him.

“What do I know, Nathan? Tell me what I _know_.” Nathan looked away, and Peter relented again. “Thanks. That would be great. Tell Mom I was tired.”

“Where are you going to be?” Nathan asked, rubbing his fingers along his chin. Peter knew that look; Nathan had seen something he wanted and decided to have it. He’d seen that expression when Nathan took Ellen into the woods at that wedding. Peter could still see the struggle there, but he didn’t care—he was winning.

Peter smiled in a way that felt strange on his face. Triumph, not something he tasted very often. “Your room.”

Their mother had updated the room as Nathan grew older so it didn’t hold any of the childhood memorabilia that Peter’s friends’ older sibling had in their old rooms. It wasn’t a shrine; instead it held a double bed with a blue and white striped comforter on it, and tasteful artwork on the walls. Barely Nathan’s at all.

Peter sat on the bed for a moment, nervousness fluttering his stomach, then got up again and paced around the room.

Nathan didn’t take long to join him. “Your graduation present?” he asked, as he closed the door.

“Don’t do me any favors,” said Peter with a smile and he couldn’t keep the hitch of excitement out of his voice.

“You want this,” said Nathan, not making it a question.

“Yes.”

Nathan stood a few feet away from him, hands in his pockets like he was deliberately holding himself back. “Why?”

Peter looked Nathan. He’d been growing his hair longer since leaving the navy, and a lock fell softly over his forehead. He frowned at Peter, hard and unbreakable, but Peter had seen Nathan gasp for him, and wanted it again, wanted Nathan inside him when he came, Nathan’s hips bruising his. “Because . . . you’re _you_ ,” said Peter.

The moment stretched out, until Peter ended it by kissing Nathan’s mouth, and then Nathan took over. Once Nathan made up his mind he was strong and sure, hands and mouth everywhere on Peter’s body, pulling his clothes off him, kissing him everywhere, teeth stinging Peter’s nipples and marking his throat, fingers teasing along Peter’s stomach, tracing down to wrap around his cock. Peter arched with pleasure; Nathan’s hands belonged on him, telling him who he was, who he could be.

Peter expected Nathan to turn him over, but Nathan pressed a finger into Peter while he lay on his back, legs spread, knees up, waiting. Nathan took lube from the bedside table, left there for him or from some conquest past, Peter never knew, just that Nathan’s finger burned smoothly into Peter as it opened him.

Nathan stroked Peter’s cock slowly. His finger felt big enough to sting as his ass stretched to accommodate it, and Peter wondered how he’d ever fit all of Nathan. He concentrated on the strange new sensations, how he could feel every stroke of Nathan’s hand around him echoed inside, so much more intense than when Nathan just jerked him off alone.

“You ready for more?” Nathan asked, his voice rough. His face was impassive, not revealing anything.

“Yes,” gasped Peter. He trailed his fingers down Nathan’s chest, tracing the slim line of hair that led to Nathan’s cock. When Peter wrapped his hand around it, it strained up, revealing what his face wouldn’t.

The second finger was easier than the first. Peter felt like clay in Nathan’s hands. _I’m yours,_ he wanted to say, but surely Nathan knew that already. Peter was almost ready to come when Nathan tore open a condom with his teeth, pushed it on, one hand still half buried in Peter. Then he pulled it out and guided his cock in.

It hurt and Peter closed his eyes against the pain, and breathed. His heart beat fast and his skin flushed, but the tears that leaked out weren’t for that but for the relief of it; this is how he and Nathan were always meant to be. Nowhere to hide now. Nathan didn’t move until Peter opened his eyes and looked up at him. “Yes,” said Peter.

Peter wrapped his hand around himself as Nathan pressed into him, and came before he could help himself. It was hardly a release with Nathan still there, inside him, looking down at him. Peter put his hand up to Nathan’s face, to trace his fingers over Nathan’s lips, but Nathan shook him off, gently.

Peter grew hard again as Nathan continued his slow, steady movements. The end of each stroke hit something deep inside him that made his vision darken. It wasn’t anything he’d ordinarily call pleasure, but it wasn’t pain either, it was something more, something he’d been craving without even knowing what it was.

“Nathan,” Peter breathed. Nathan looked down at Peter as he sped up, fucking him hard enough Peter felt he might come apart without Nathan’s hands hard on his hips, holding him together. Peter gave himself a few sharp strokes and came again just before Nathan.

“Oh, God, Pete,” said Nathan. He kissed Peter’s neck, lips, sloppily, carelessly, not like the Nathan Peter knew, always perfect and precise. Some hurt chased across Nathan’s face, but he hid it quickly, pulled out of Peter and went to the attached bathroom.

“That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?” said Nathan when he came back. He sat down on the bed

Peter sat up and pulled Nathan back down next to him. “For now,” he said. “Next time you have to have more fun.”

“There’s not going to be a next time,” said Nathan, but Peter smiled at that as if that were an endearment, and Nathan’s fingers traced over Peter’s cheek and neck, telling Peter what his words wouldn’t.

“Go to your own bed,” said Nathan. “Tomorrow . . .”

“Yes, tomorrow.” Peter sat up. “I think I’ll go back to the party now.” He grinned at Nathan.

Nathan stroked his hand along Peter’s thigh, teasing along the inside. “You’re not serious.”

“I am. I’m in a much better mood now.” Nathan sat up too, turned on his beside light and traced the marks on Peter’s neck.

“I hope you have a girlfriend so you can explain this,” said Nathan.

Peter stood up and tugged back on his pants and shirt. His skin felt incredibly sensitive and his hands still tingled. He felt . . . fucked. “Don’t worry.” Peter pressed his fingers to his neck, over the raw skin there. “No one cares what I do. No one will even notice.”

***

His mother did notice, and remarked to Nathan the next morning that she wondered which of her friends’ daughters had been so indiscreet. “I should thank her. Peter was in a much better mood afterward.”

“Ma!” said Nathan.

Mrs. Petrelli shrugged and pressed her lips together delicately.

“I told Peter I’d take him up to Nantucket for the week before my internship,” said Nathan.

“I’m right here,” said Peter, mimicking his usual morning sullenness, but not really feeling it. He stole a glance at Nathan, who was buttering his bagel.

Mrs. Petrelli raised her eyebrows and Mr. Petrelli put down his newspaper long enough to nod and say, “Make sure you call Peterson to turn on the water before you get there.”

Nathan drove them there in his BMW, and Peter alternated looking out the window and watching Nathan’s sure hand on the gear shift. They arrived at the house just as the sun dipped low enough to bathe the white shutters of the house in a golden light. Peterson had turned on the water and also stocked the fridge with a paper bag of live lobsters and a case of beer.

“Swim first?” said Nathan.

“No,” said Peter, smiling. Nathan followed him up to his bedroom and they fucked again—Nathan behind him this time—with slow, tantalizing strokes that made it last forever. Peter was sore from the night before, but that somehow made it even better—he could feel it even more. They went swimming in the ocean and fucked after dinner, on the couch, Peter on Nathan’s lap.

They went to a restaurant in town the next evening for beer-battered shrimp. Cracked peanut shells littered the floor on the floor and the bar had an impressive beer list, but they didn’t stay long, were too eager to get back to their privacy again. That night, Nathan sucked Peter off, licking his balls and making Peter call his name. Peter wondered if he’d done it before.

“Who else, Peter?” Nathan asked the next night, when he was buried inside Peter, stretching him out with slow strokes. He didn’t vary his rhythm. “Tell me.” Maybe the edge in Nathan’s voice should have frightened him, but instead it made Peter’s pulse quicken, and he pushed his hips back against Nathan’s.

“Mandy, and Theresa, and—”

“Who?” asked Nathan.

“No one else, just you.”

“You want other men.” Nathan's rhythm became more punishing, and Peter would have worried about being sore, except this whole week was one orgy of soreness and pleasure until he couldn’t tell where one started and the other stopped. This week the simple act of walking made Peter feel everywhere Nathan’s hands and cock and mouth had been and made Peter want him all over again.

“Not as much as I want you. Come on, let me on top.” Nathan pulled out and rolled over on his back. Peter positioned himself over Nathan and sat down on Nathan’s cock.

“No one else,” said Nathan, gritting his teeth, and grabbing Peter’s hips hard enough to bruise. “No other men.”

“As long as you want me,” said Peter. Nathan pulled Peter down to kiss him. He bit Peter’s neck when he came.

 **New York, January 2011.**

Nathan won’t remember that week now, the memories that still make Peter blush, so many years later. Peter feels Nathan starting to wake from his artificial sleep and walks into the bedroom. The sunlight coming in the window is harsh and winter-cold.

“Shouldn’t I get to a doctor, Peter?” asks Nathan when he wakes up. “I’ve lost my memory and I keep on falling asleep.” Peter looks away guiltily and paces along the bottom of the bed.

“I’m a nurse. There’s nothing wrong with you.”

“A . . .” Nathan laughs, raising his eyebrows, incredulous. “A nurse? What does Dad think about that?”

“He wasn’t a fan.”

“Never mind. Unless you can look at me and tell I don’t have a concussion or a brain tumor or something, I need to get to a doctor.”

“You _can’t_. Someone’s after you, Nathan. I’m trying to keep you alive. If anyone sees you.”

“So call someone to come here. I’d look through a phone book but it doesn’t look like you have one. The family still has money, right?”

“Yes. Plenty.”

“So? I don’t see the problem.”

Peter can picture a doctor coming to see them, and calling Nathan “Mr. President.” How did he even think this would work? There’s no way to keep Nathan from finding out about that, not while they’re still in the US, with his face on every TV, on every newspaper.

“I know. We’ll go to Nantucket. It’s safer than New York. The family still has a house there.”

“Nantucket.” His expression darkens and he darts a glance at Peter. Peter looks at him, eyes wide, searching his thoughts for some memory, but whatever prompted Nathan’s expression is gone now.

“You don’t think whoever’s after me will look in our family’s house?” Nathan asks. “I don’t know who’s after me, but that’s the first place I’d look.”

“They won’t.”

Nathan tips his head to one side and those shadows of suspicions flash across his mind again. “Peter, what aren’t you telling me?” he asks.

“It’s been fifteen years, Nathan. There’s a lot I haven’t filled you in on yet.”

  
 **New York, Fall 1997.**

Peter spent the summer of his eighteenth year life-guarding at the Larchmont country club, like Nathan had done once. He started NYU in the fall. His father wouldn’t hear of him living in the dorms, even the very best, right on Washington Square, and instead put Peter up in the same apartment building where Nathan lived. Peter dropped by once a week so they could study together and they took study breaks in Nathan’s bed.

Peter met some friends in his classes, kids wandering as aimlessly as he was. He took a film class and some social sciences, unsure of why he was in college beyond his parents’ expectations.

Nathan wanted him to get a girlfriend and so he did, a religion major a few years older than him who wanted to be a rabbi. Nathan laughed at his choice; she was more inappropriate than anything Nathan had managed, Nathan told him. But Peter enjoyed Tovah’s earnestness and honesty, her earthy sexiness and throaty laugh. She reminded him nothing at all of Nathan, soft curviness where Nathan was harsh angles.

Nathan took them out to dinner at a Kosher steak house in midtown. Tovah laughed when she saw where they were going—she was reform and didn’t keep Kosher, although she planned to if she became a rabbi—but she liked rare steak and red wine, and this place did those right. She answered Nathan’s questions politely and even engaged him in an interesting discussion of Jewish Law. Nathan had had a studied a case recently where a civil matter was decided by the Bet Din rather than the secular courts.

“What’d you think of Nathan?” Peter asked her after dinner when they went back to Peter’s apartment and left Nathan to his.

Tovah shrugged, looking uncomfortable. “He’s very smart.” She sat down next to Peter on his couch as Peter started a taped episode of _Dawson’s Creek_.

“Yeah, smart,” Peter echoed. “You didn’t like him?”

“I don’t like how he treats you.”

Peter swallowed and said casually, “I don’t know what you mean.”

“He doesn’t—he acts like he owns you.” Peter thought back through dinner; Nathan’s guiding hand on Peter’s arm, his shoulder, his waist. “You act like he does, too.”

“He’s my big brother, Tovah. He’s allowed to boss me around.” Allowed to push Peter up against a wall, down on the bed. Anything he wanted. Peter got hard in the few seconds it took his mind to drift there, and came back to Tovah looking at him intently.

“You’re worth just as much as him,” Tovah was saying, but Peter kissed her instead of continuing the conversation, and pulled her on top of him. She liked to be on top, and Peter liked to watch her there, taking her pleasure, unashamed.

But she didn’t stop him from wanting Nathan, thinking about Nathan whenever they were apart. He nurtured childish fantasies of a life together, just him and Nathan, like that week in Nantucket. Nothing to take them away from each other.

Nathan kept their meetings to once a week or less, when Peter would have willingly shared a bed every night, just so he could wake up with Nathan’s body wrapped around him, watched Nathan’s face when he slept.

Nathan had a girlfriend Peter never met, but he could see her dark hair and the lithe lines of her body when they left the building together for a date, or on her own when she left after a morning spent in Nathan’s bed.

Peter was writing an essay for his Freshman Writing Seminar one evening when someone rang his doorbell. Peter looked through the peephole and it was _her_. Heidi—but Peter never thought of her by name.

“I’m Heidi Moreno,” she said when he answered the door. “You must be Peter Petrelli. Your brother has no class sometimes.”

“Huh?” said Peter.

“He just told me that you live in the same building, and he’s never introduced us.”

Peter pushed his hair back off his face. “Uh, nice to meet you,” he said. He put out his hand a moment too late, and then looked down at himself. He was wearing only wearing a pair of shorts over boxers, and one sock. “Sorry,” he said. “Come in. Let me put on a shirt and get you something to drink.”

Nathan had stocked Peter’s fridge with more beer and wine than even the most accomplished college-age drinker could want. “Sprite, if you have it,” said Heidi. She perched on one of the stools at his breakfast bar. He got some ice out of the freezer and poured Heidi a glass before going back into his room and throwing on a t-shirt.

“Well, Heidi, what can I do for you?” Peter smiled, trying for charm. It seemed to work, or Heidi was already disposed to be charmed by him.

“Tell me something about yourself.” She looked at him expectantly. Peter told her about his classes, about Tovah, about the time Nathan took him out of school for a day when he was ten to go to an amusement park, and how angry his mother had been when she found out.

“Aw, that’s sweet of him.” Heidi looked up when the door opened. “Hi honey, Peter was just telling me nice things about you.”

“Ruining my reputation, I see,” said Nathan with a broad smile. He wore a pair of jeans and a button down shirt, un-tucked and rolled up at the sleeves. It was some color between blue and purple. Peter wondered if Heidi had picked it out for him; it wasn’t a color Peter had seen him in before. He pulled a beer out of the fridge and tossed it to Nathan before opening one himself.

Heidi tipped her lips up for a kiss and Nathan gave her one, after shooting a warning look at Peter.

“Nathan,” said Heidi. “I think Peter should come to dinner with us tonight.”

“Pete, you want to?”

“I have to finish up this composition . . .”

“Oh come on,” said Heidi. “Nathan wants to take me to some steakhouse again. Help me convince him to go somewhere trendy.”

“Trendy,” Peter echoed blankly, then put some enthusiasm into his voice. “Sounds great. Let me shower and change and I’ll meet you at Nathan’s place.”

Nathan and Heidi exchanged a look that Peter couldn’t read—conspiratorial, perhaps—and left Peter’s apartment.

After that he saw Heidi almost as often as he saw Nathan. It wasn’t until finals that Peter was alone with Nathan again. They ended up in bed, as usual, as if Nathan hadn’t used Heidi to keep them apart for the last two months. They fucked face-to-face, Nathan cupping Peter’s chin with his hand, tracing Peter’s lips with his thumb.

“That’s it,” said Nathan after. Peter nestled in the curve of his arm. He didn’t have to say anything, really. Peter knew enough to know what a goodbye fuck felt like. He could argue was much as he wanted to, but he could see how Nathan looked at Heidi. _She_ was who he wanted to take care of now.

“Yeah, right,” said Peter anyway, hoping he was wrong. He kissed along the side of Nathan’s chest, following the trail of red marks that his lips and teeth had made earlier.

“I’m serious, Peter. I’m proposing to Heidi. We’re getting married. This . . . has gone on long enough.”

“Putting aside childish things?” he asked. Tovah liked to quote passages from the Bible, a liability, she said, of being a Religion major, and that phrase had stuck in Peter’s head.

“That’s right,” said Nathan. “I’m glad you understand.”

***

At first Peter didn’t really register what it would mean: Nathan getting married. _He’ll be back_ , Peter told himself, until he had to realize it wasn’t true.

He dreamed still of Nathan’s hands on him, Nathan bending him over, Nathan inside him. He woke from dreams more vivid than reality, and waited until night when he could sleep again.

He nodded off during his history lecture one day and saw . . . _A man dying in bed, IV in his arm, and Peter’s own hands applying tape to a catheter . . . Nathan broken and burning, then whole again._

 _Fade to another place, under hot sun and dusty sky. Peter sits in the dirt, cross legged, and a line of people stretches out in front of him, faces dark—shadow, dirty, natural skin tone?—Peter can’t tell. He touches them and they smile and try to give him thin coins, pots of food, bolts of cloth. He wipes the sweat from his brow, and his hand comes away dirty._

Peter woke up with a start that flung his books off his desk and onto the floor. He heard tittering as he knelt down to pick them up.

That afternoon he took the train up to Larchmont for dinner with the family. The sun set early this late in the year, and he watched the sky turn pink over the Hudson, silhouetting the bare trees at the top of the cliff on the far the shore. Trash washed up into the muck by the rivers edge and froze into the mud. Peter watched men in tan uniforms stabbing at the trash and putting it into bags, and he wondered who they were, whether this was punishment or vocation.

Once they all assembled around the dining room table, Mr. Petrelli tapped his fork on his glass and they all stood for a toast with a ten year old Far Niente cabernet sauvignon. Nathan looked around the table, his eyes sliding over Peter without seeming to seeing him. It wasn’t until they posed for a picture in front of the fireplace—“The first family portrait with Heidi,” said Mrs. Petrelli—that Nathan put his arm around Peter and gave his shoulder a squeeze—the first indication that evening that Peter was anything to him but an acquaintance.

Peter grabbed Nathan’s arm as Nathan disengaged from the photo. “Nathan, I have to talk to you.” Nathan smiled broad and false at him, and glanced around at the rest of the family. Peter could see his mother’s expression turning brittle, his father’s stern, Heidi’s confused.

“Not now, Pete,” said Nathan, without losing the phony smile.

“Yes, now.”

Peter saw Nathan’s throat work as he swallowed. He glanced at Heidi, who was looking back at him expectantly.

Nathan guided him by the waist into the den, and leaned back against their father’s desk, arms crossed over his chest. “Peter, I hope this isn’t about . . .” He widened his eyes significantly.

“Nathan, I had this dream. I was healing people.”

Nathan shook his head at the non sequitur. “And you’re telling me this because . . .”

“It was so vivid, Nathan, it was like . . . a prophecy or something.”

“So what, you’re going to be pre-med or something? You said you’re not taking any science, but I guess you could transfer . . .”

“It wasn’t like that. I wasn’t a doctor. I was _healing_ people.”

Nathan pinched the bridge of his nose. “What do you want me to do about this?”

“I don’t know, I thought you’d . . . you were in the dream too.”

Nathan glanced at him sharply. “Dreams, Peter? You need to live in the real world.” He ruffled Peter’s hair, and walked past him out of the den.

***

The whole Petrelli family was invited to the New Years ball at the Mayor’s mansion. Peter put on the tuxedo that he’d already bought to be Nathan’s best man. Ever since Peter had been too young to remember, it was Nathan’s job to tie Peter’s bow-tie, and he didn’t disappoint this time.

He walked into Peter’s room and leaned on the door jamb, one arm up—an imitation of some movie, Peter thought—but Nathan made the gesture his own. He pulled a flask out of the inner pocket of his tuxedo jacket, took a swig, and offered it to Peter. “Help you get through the speeches,” he said, grimacing at the warm, metallic liquor.

Peter made a face at him and took the flask (made by Tiffany’s, engraved with Nathan’s monogram). Nathan didn’t drink that much, but Peter knew he loved the visual the flask it made when he took it out of his jacket. Peter took a sip from it, wrapping his lips around where Nathan’s had been before.

“Dad switched to Knob Creek in the den,” Nathan said apologetically.

Peter shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. It’s still scotch; it’s still gross.”

“It’s whiskey.”

Peter handed the flask back to Nathan. “Whatever.” He tugged on one end of his bowtie and the whole thing came unraveled. “I tried to tie it myself. Not very well, though.”

Nathan sighed and stepped in close, taking the ends of the tie in his hands. He had a thin sheen of sweat on his upper lip; he was less composed up close than he’d looked from the door.

“You’re gonna kiss Heidi at midnight?” asked Peter, in a low voice. Nathan kept his eyes on Peter’s bow tie.

“That’s right, Pete,” he said. “And you’re going to kiss . . . Tovah is it?”

“She’s not coming,” said Peter. Mrs. Petrelli had offered to finagle an invitation for her, but Peter didn’t like to mix her with his family. They treated her like she was temporary, and Peter didn’t want to admit that she probably was.

“Lots of pretty girls there, Pete. Actresses and everything.” He fiddled with the tie, slipping his fingers under the band around Peter’s neck to make sure it lay flat.

“Yeah? Why are you bringing Heidi, then?”

Nathan glanced up at him. “Because we’re getting married, Pete.” He pressed his lips together and hesitated, fingers still on Peter’s neck, just above his shirt collar.

“Please, Nathan,” Peter said, although he’d promised himself he wouldn’t.

Nathan took his hand off Peter’s neck. “Happy New Year.” He squeezed Peter’s shoulder with the same fake-intimate gesture their father used on potential clients.

“Yeah, you too.”

They took a car to the party. Mrs. Petrelli and Heidi talked about the wedding the whole way there: the venue (Windows on the World), the flowers (orchids), the invitations (engraved). Peter looked out the window at the streets, partiers bundled against the cold, stepping over the bodies of the less fortunate, freezing in the streets. He pulled up the sleeve of his tux and looked at his watch—a graduation present, it was gold and probably worth several thousand dollars. He could only wear it a few times a year, at events like this.

There were poinsettias and garlands of fir boughs all over Gracie Mansion and waiters in white jackets at every elbow. Peter took a glass of champagne off one of their plates and drained it in one gulp as soon as they walked in through the entrance way.

“Peter,” said Nathan warningly.

“Don’t worry. I’ll be a quiet drunk.”

Peter spent the party wandering to and from the bathroom, drinking away the feeling that he didn’t belong, that he wasn’t supposed to be here. He was younger than most of the guests, except a gaggle of high school aged Manhattanites who were excited at having access to an open bar more easily accessible than their parents’ locked liquor cabinets. One of the boys flirted with Peter and Peter let the boy lead him behind a potted plant for some furtive rubbing over the pants. He hoped Nathan would notice, but if he did, he never let Peter know.

At midnight he watched Nathan kiss Heidi: her arms snaked around his neck, he bent down, all attention on her, and gave her an open mouthed kiss. Heidi turned and kissed Peter next, a more chaste press of lips, and then Nathan grabbed his neck and kissed him hard on the cheek.  



	3. Chapter 3

“To my brother Nathan,” said Peter. He raised his glass of Harp. “He’s getting married.”

Tovah’s friends hesitated a moment, then raised their glasses too. “To Nathan,” they echoed. Dojo was pretty serious about checking ID, but Peter’s would pass any scrutiny—Nathan had his methods—and Tovah and most of her friend were older.

“What kind of wedding?” asked Taryn. She was new to the group and Peter wondered how she fit in.

Peter rolled his eyes, but smiled at the unalterable truth of women’s love for weddings—especially women religion majors. “Catholic, of course.”

“Oh, of course,” she said.

“Are they going to do it in St. Patrick’s?” asked Travis. Peter smiled thinly. He didn’t like Travis much, since he seemed to fill the same role in the group that Peter would like to: the dark-haired romantic dreamer. Travis was better at it, better read, better looking, in Peter’s opinion, but Peter had the Petrelli thing when all else failed. Travis couldn’t compete with that.

“I don’t know if it’s going to be a big thing or not.” He took another swig of his beer and set it down on the rickety table. It wobbled no matter how many times Peter tried to wedge it with napkins. He thought about the pleasure Nathan used to take from being mentioned in Page Six, being named among New York’s eligible bachelors. He’d want a big, high-profile wedding. “Probably so, knowing Nathan.”

The rest of the crowd laughed appreciatively. “Wow, I hear you have to book that like, ten years in advance,” said Taryn.

“Not for Nath—the Petrellis,” said Travis.

“Why?” asked Taryn.

“You’ll have to forgive her,” said Travis. “She’s from Minnesota.” He turned to Taryn. “The Petrellis are New York royalty. They’ll get St. Patrick’s.”

“I don’t know. They might do it out of Larchmont.” Peter swept his hair back from his face. He wished he hadn’t brought it up.

“Married from Larchmont,” said Taryn. “It sounds like a Jane Austen novel.”

“More like Mario Puzo,” said Travis. Peter glanced at him, surprised at the venom. He hadn’t realized the rivalry went both ways.

“Really?” said Taryn, unperturbed.

“No,” said Peter, looking daggers at Travis. In high school he might have made a joke about it, said “Fuggedaboudit,” or something else in his inexpert Al Pacino imitation, but now he didn’t feel like making anyone more comfortable. “I’m going for a walk.”

“Peter, he didn’t mean anything by it,” Tovah called out from the door of the restaurant after Peter got outside. The January air chilled Peter’s lungs but it felt good, purifying.

“I know,” said Peter. “It’s just . . . sometimes I want to get away from it, is all.”

Tovah nodded solemnly. “I know, Peter. Come back to dinner?”

Peter shook his head. “No, I’m gonna walk.” He bent down to kiss her on the cheek. “I’ll call you later.”

“Peter, I thought . . . ?”

He squeezed her shoulder, comforting and dismissive at the same time—like Nathan taught him. “I just need to be alone right now.”

Peter walked west, through the West Village, past the Blue Note, where the sounds of people talking overwhelmed whatever jazz was playing, up Greenwich Ave. and then up 8th Avenue. He stopped and warmed himself in seedy bar in Chelsea. The neighborhood was getting nicer; the Petrellis and other wealthy families were buying up real estate there anticipating a boom, but the restaurants and bars hadn’t caught up with the hype yet.

“Bad break-up?” asked a man sitting next to him. Peter had switched from beer to scotch, not because he’d learned to like it, but because Nathan drank it. _How fucking pathetic is that?_

Peter laughed shortly. “Something like that.”

“Hey, I know what that’s like, man. There are other . . . guys out there.”

Peter didn’t say anything but took another sip. He really did hate the taste, the too-harsh smokiness of it, but it was getting the job done—his lips and face had started to feel numb. Another glass and he wouldn’t care about anything at all. He could feel the guy still staring at him so he smiled, not pleasantly. “I hate scotch. But _he_ drinks it.” _That’s right, your brother is just another ex-boyfriend._

“That’s rough.” The guy slid over and put his hand on Peter’s knee, as Peter knew he would. “But there are ways to forget him.”

Peter considered for a moment. Aside from a few blowjobs from boys in high school, Nathan had been the only one. Girls were easier, both for him and for his family to deal with, and when Nathan wanted him, there hadn’t seemed a need.

“That’s true,” said Peter. He didn’t really know how this went—if he would go back to the guy’s place, fuck in the bathroom, or something else. The guy wasn’t bad looking, somewhere between his age and Nathan’s. Eyes thickly framed with dark lashes, like Nathan’s but kinder, the set of his mouth a little indecisive. Peter decided he liked it.

“I’m Peter,” he said. “Or do you not want my name?”

“Roger. You haven’t done this before, have you?” asked Roger, resigned but with a hint of amusement.

“Sort of,” said Peter.

“What’s that mean?”

Peter licked his lips. “I’ll show you.”

“I live near here,” said Roger, as Peter followed him out.

They kissed on the stairs with an urgency that felt manufactured to Peter, and then Peter sucked him off in the front hall of his apartment.

“Nice,” said Roger when he peeled off Peter’s shirt, and kissed him again.

“Skinny,” said Peter.

“I like that.”

Roger wanted Peter to fuck him, which was a relief. Peter wasn’t sure he wanted anyone but Nathan inside him, not yet. It wasn’t like fucking a girl, not quite, but it wasn’t anything like being with Nathan.

“Can I see you again?” Roger asked afterward.

Peter shrugged. “I don’t know. I have a girlfriend.”

“I see,” said Roger, suddenly bitter. “Slumming it in Chelsea? Rich kid slut.”

Peter backed away from the anger. He must have committed some faux pas, but with his body still buzzing from the orgasm and his head buzzing from the scotch, he didn’t care. Roger could keep his anger; Peter just felt numb.

“I’ll see you around,” said Peter with a phony salute, after he put back on his clothes. Roger didn’t say anything at all.

***

Peter didn’t find Roger next time, but he did find Chris, who wanted to fuck him, and didn’t care about seeing him again. Chris kicked Peter out after, and Peter wandered the streets, shirt misbuttoned, mouth bruised. He was drunker than he thought. He sat down on a bench in Washington Square, trying to remember where his keys might be, what the super’s number was to get back into his apartment, and without meaning to, fell asleep.

He woke up with a junkie’s hand in his pocket and the sour, stale smell of unwashed body in his nose. “Hey, get the hell off me!” he yelled.

“Hush man, don’t make a scene.”

“Don’t make a scene? You’re stealing my wallet.” He shoved the junkie away, and somehow found the blade of a knife embedded in his wrist. “Hey,” he yelled, more angry than hurt—that hadn’t set in yet. The junkie hesitated a moment. He had Peter’s wallet but seemed to want the knife back. Finally he thought better of it, turned and ran away.

Peter looked at his wrist, feeling oddly detached. There was a knife sticking out of it, deep enough that Peter knew he shouldn’t take it out. Blood seeped around the edges, black in the pale blue light from the streetlamps. Dizziness started to cloud his vision, but some lucid part of him noted, _This is shock. This is what shock feels like._

St. Vincent’s was only a few blocks away, Peter knew. He could walk there like this. Now the wound started to hurt, but not as much as he expected. He stood up from the bench and promptly passed out.

 _Tents with blue tarps for roofs stretch as far as Peter can see. In front of him a small girl with a gold stud in her nose holds up a hand with fingers sticking up at odd angles. Peter touches her wrist and her hand straightens._

 _Then he’s somewhere else, setting a broken arm. He turns and behind him is a small dispensary. He counts out some pills into a plastic bag and hands it to a short round woman wearing a white blouse with pink ribbons threaded through the sleeves and long wool skirt. A smile cracks her face into a million wrinkles and she thanks him in Spanish. He looks out the window at mountain whose base is ringed by a patchwork of fields. The sun dazzles his eyes._

The next thing he remembered was waking up in a hospital bed with an IV in his arm and his wrist bandaged. The room seemed awfully bright and Peter lifted up his hand to shade his eyes so he could see Nathan sitting next to him.

“Good, you’re awake,” he said brusquely. “Now I can get back to work.”

Peter rolled his eyes. Jerkiness was Nathan’s default position, more and more the older he got. Peter paid no attention to it. “Wait, Nathan, what happened?”

“The police found you freezing and bleeding to death in Washington Square Park, with no ID.”

“How did they figure out who I was?”

“That doesn’t matter. What were you doing there?”

“I guess I . . .” Peter tried to remember back: Chris’s big, brutal hands, then his drunk walk back to NYU. “I got drunk.”

“Peter, what else happened?” Nathan asked, more gentle now. “The doctors said there were . . . bruises.”

Peter thought of Chris’s hands again, gripping his hips painfully hard, while he speared Peter’s ass. “I don’t know,” said Peter, looking Nathan in the eyes, daring Nathan to call him on the lie.

“Don’t, Peter. Where were you last night?”

“In some guy’s apartment, letting him fuck me, okay, Nathan? Is that what you wanted to hear?”

Nathan’s jaw worked. “Will you lower your voice?”

“Fuck you, Nathan.”

“Nice, Pete. Real nice.” He glanced at his watch. “Look, I have to be in court in a half hour. Mom is coming by soon. She’ll take you home.”

“Yippee,” said Peter, deadpan.

“I don’t have time for this.” He leaned over and kissed Peter on the forehead. “I’m glad you’re okay. We’ll talk about this more later.”

“Will we, Nathan?”

Nathan’s eyes met his for a long moment. He had one hand on the door. Peter saw him more clearly, his fear for Peter revealed now that he wasn’t hiding behind his brusque façade. “Peter . . . you can’t blame me more than I already blame myself,” he said, his tone mild as the words were not.

“I don’t blame you,” said Peter, but Nathan had already left.

The nurse came in as soon as Nathan had gone to check on Peter’s bandage and his blood pressure. “You lost a lot of blood,” she said brightly. She was tall and slim with a narrow face that looked forbidding in repose but warm when she smiled. “Your brother is really something. Just like he looks in the papers.”

Peter reached up with the arm not attached to an IV and brushed his hair over his ear. It felt awkward doing it with the wrong hand. “In a good way or a bad way?”

“Well, it must be tough, having him for an older brother, that’s all. I’m sure he’s a good guy, he’s just . . . you’re like the moon and the sun, you two.” She colored and looked away. “I’m sorry. It’s none of my business.”

“My name is Peter Petrelli,” said Peter, putting out his free hand to shake hers.

She smiled. “I’m Maria Vasquez.”

“Do you like being a nurse, Maria?” Peter smiled at her. She would like him, even if Nathan . . . Peter could make _her_ like him.

“Yes.” Peter could hear a depth of commitment and passion in that one word, more than he’d ever had for anything. He envied her that.

“Listen, have you ever heard of someone who can just . . .” _Reach out and heal people?_

“Peter,” he heard his mother say from the door.

“I’ll leave you now,” said Maria.

“She’s nice,” said Peter, after Maria left. “I think I might like to be a nurse. I had this dream . . .”

“Don’t be ridiculous. And don’t change the subject.” Peter frowned at that, but Mrs. Petrelli didn’t look like she would take kindly to being interrupted. “How did this happen?”

“I’m sorry, Mom. It was an accident.”

“You accidentally got stabbed? I’ve called the police. They’re here to take your statement.”

“Mom, let it go. The guy didn’t mean to stab me.”

“I suppose he didn’t mean to take your wallet either?” she asked acerbically.

Peter gave his statement to the police, but didn’t expect anything to come of it. Peter stopped by the nurses’ station on his way out, and found Maria there entering something into the computer. “I’d like to see you again,” he said. She frowned and looked away. “Not like that,” Peter said quickly. “I promise. I just . . . I want to know more about you.”

“Not a date?” said Maria.

“I promise,” said Peter. “I won’t pay for anything.”

Maria wrote down her number on a card and handed it to him. Peter tucked it into his pocket, and then glanced at his mother who stood in the hallway, masking her impatience poorly.

“A nurse?” she said, as if reconsidering. “I suppose that’s better than a rabbi. I’ve always wanted a nurse in the family.”

“I just asked for her number, Mom.”

She smiled fondly at him and patted his cheek. “I’m sure it’s very innocent.” She took his arm as they walked down the hall together. “You’re just like your brother with women,” she said. “They can’t resist that Petrelli charm.”

“Come on,” said Peter. “I’m not as bad as Nathan.” The constant turnover of Nathan’s girlfriends had been the subject of not a few conversations when Peter was growing up.

“Not yet.”

 **Nantucket, January 2011.**

“Peter, I want you to tell me everything you know about who is after me and why. Starting with who President Petrelli is. Is it Pa?” Nathan asks, but Peter can feel him hoping that it’s him.

“Dad’s dead.”

Nathan shakes that off, storing it away for another time. “It’s not you, you’re too young.”

Peter looks away again. Nathan is still standing too close, making Peter’s body react in ways it shouldn’t. It didn’t count in the East Wing—that was to get close enough to save Nathan—Peter could justify that to himself, but not this.

He deliberately thinks of Mohinder: the first face he sees in the morning, the last at night, of the smell of their home together in Bangalore, the feel of their marble floors under his feet. A thought and he could be back there, and Nathan would—Peter digs into his mind—make trouble, ask too many questions, wander around wearing the president’s face and get himself killed.

“I’m President and people are after me,” Nathan says, a note of wonder under his usual sarcasm. “Peter, don’t you think the Secret Service is going to come looking for me?”

Peter shakes his head, and turns on the TV with a thought. They’re re-broadcasting the earlier press conference, and there’s Candace again, getting Nathan’s mannerisms subtly wrong, a brittleness to her cadence throwing off the delivery. Peter wonders if Heidi or their mother would look at this and see anything wrong. The date shows today, while Nathan was sleeping.

“That’s me?” Nathan asks. He tilts his head to one side. “I’m old.”

Peter has to smile at that. “You are, but it’s not you. They found a . . . replacement.”

“So no one is looking for me?”

“Only the people who want to keep you gone.”

“How are they doing it? Plastic surgery?”

“Let’s go to Nantucket, and I’ll tell you.”

Again he glances at Peter. “What’s the obsession? No one’s there this time of year.”

“That’s why.” He steps in close to Nathan, puts his arms around Nathan’s waist, and blinks them to the Nantucket house. He keeps them invisible, in case someone is watching, but it’s deserted, a dusting of snow mixed in with the sand on the beach, undisturbed for miles except by the wind and surf.

“Peter, tell me what the hell is going on. I didn’t get hit on the head that hard.” _If that’s what even happened_. “How did we get here? How did you know this was going to happen to . . . save me?”

“Let’s go inside first, Nathan. It’s cold.”

The house is freezing; it’s a summer home with thin walls, not meant for winter habitation. Nathan helps Peter plug the worst drafts with newspapers and lay towels along the bottoms of the doors. Nathan glances at Peter while they work, hoping, Peter knows, to catch him doing something out of the ordinary.

When there are no more holes to fill, they pull robes, sweat pants and thick wool socks in an old chest in the guest room. The clothes smell of mothballs and mildew. Nathan pulls on one of the robes the same way he used to put on a suit, precise movements, and a tug in the front to make sure it sits right.

“How did we get here, Peter?” Nathan asks. “Tell me.” Peter can hear the chill of anger in his voice, the hint of danger. Nathan is cold and surgical in his anger and Peter’s not in a hurry to experience that again; he digs wounds with his words that he never means to heal.

“I teleported us, Nathan.”

Nathan blinks at him. “You _what_?”

Peter jumps across the room again. “That’s not the only thing I can do.” Nathan frowns, dismissively, a mirror the way he reacted when Peter first told him. _When I’m with you, Nathan, I can fly._

“Why’d we come here, then?”

Peter shrugs. “Good memories, I guess. I knew no one would be here.”

Nathan flinches, and Peter catches a thread of guilt in Nathan’s thoughts, but it fades before he can follow it. Maybe he left something behind.

“I have to get some food, some wood for the fireplace. Promise me you won’t go anywhere.” Nathan doesn’t say anything, so Peter puts his hand on Nathan’s shoulder. His muscles feel tight, even through the thick flannel robe. “Promise me,” he says again.

Peter doesn’t bother seeing if any of the stores on the island are open when he’s just a blink away from New York. He stops at Smith and Wollensky’s and gets some steaks to go, picks up canned soup, toilet paper and a box of matches at a near by D’Agostino’s then jumps back to Nantucket, only an hour gone.

“That ability of yours makes shopping easy,” says Nathan, wryly but with an undercurrent of anger underneath. “Tell me, Peter, what else can you do?”

“Nathan, you should eat. The steaks are going to get cold.”

“You can heat them up, can’t you?” He’s standing too close to Peter now, tension showing in the set of his jaw. Peter’s first instinct is to push him away, like he did Claude and the sadism that passed for his training. But this is Nathan; Nathan can’t hurt him, and if he does . . . _I’ll deserve it._

“Yes,” says Peter warily.

“What else can you do? Heal? Fly? Find people? I have a whole list here. But you know what’s not on it? Erasing memories. Why do you think that is?”

“What are you talking about, Nathan?”

“You left your computer, Peter. They’ve gotten smaller, but they haven’t changed that much, have they? There were lists, papers by a Dr. Suresh, tracings of genealogy. It’s fascinating, isn’t it? And it says I can fly.” Nathan laughs, chilly and mirthless. “There are more things in heaven and earth . . .”

“Nathan, I swear . . .”

“You swear . . . what, exactly? You know who did this to me. It’s either this Haitian you have notes on—but he was working for me, or—”

“He turned,” says Peter quickly, grabbing onto the opportunity to lie. Nathan tilts his head to one side. Peter can still see the frightful anger burning under his skin. Peter puts his hands on Nathan’s shoulders. “He betrayed you.” He tries to focus on Nathan’s face but he can’t meet Nathan’s eyes; Nathan sees the telltale and wrenches himself out of Peter’s grasp.

“You’re lying, Peter,” he says.

Peter doesn’t try to deflect Nathan again. He’s earned this anger, and in a way it's a relief that Nathan knows now. “I had to, Nathan,” Peter says simply. “They would have killed you if I didn’t.”

He doesn’t try to deflect Nathan’s punch when it comes, either, just closes his eyes and lets it happen. When he opens them, he sees Nathan standing on the beach for a moment before shooting up into the sky.

 **New York, Spring 1997.**

Peter’s wrist healed cleanly and developed a thin white scar running the wrong direction to be the souvenir of a suicide attempt. Peter forgave Nathan; he couldn’t do otherwise, they were brothers. He started helping with the wedding, running interference between Heidi and Mrs. Petrelli, who butted heads in sugar-sweet tones. He listened to his mother complain about the outrages perpetrated by various catering companies, and gave Heidi what advice he could for handling her.

Something felt missing, though. Without telling anyone, he stopped going to classes, and when the semester came to a close in the spring, two months before Nathan’s wedding, he went to the registrar’s office and dropped out officially.

Tovah fell off his radar too, some time during those hazy months. Peter simply stopped putting in any effort with her either, and when she told him she wouldn’t be seeing him anymore, he couldn’t muster up any more than a halfhearted apology for being so absent.

The only thing he really enjoyed was dropping by the hospital to bring Maria cups of the Starbucks coffee to which she was addicted. It wasn’t her that drew him the most, although he admired her mixture of strength and brokenness; he liked being in the hospital, where things really mattered, where no one cared about a wedding guest list, or Nathan making Law Review.

He didn’t have the dreams again, but the memory of them stayed with him. He couldn’t figure out what they meant, if they really meant he should be a doctor, or a nurse, or if they were yet another symptom of being the younger brother, a wish for importance he would never have, not with Nathan the sun filling his sky.

Peter had hoped to intercept the notice the NYU registrar mailed out confirming his leave of absence, but he knew when he arrived for Sunday dinner a few weeks before Nathan’s wedding that the hope was in vain. His father wasn’t there when Peter got home, but as soon as he arrived he called Peter into his office.

“When were you planning to tell me about this?” he asked icily. Peter knew that he was the one who resembled his father more, and Nathan resembled their mother, and he hoped he’d never look like this, eyes narrowed, lips thinned with anger. Peter shrugged, knowing it would enrage his father further. “What do you propose to do with your life, then, if not college?”

Peter shrugged again. His father waited. “I don’t know,” said Peter sullenly.

“I’m not going to let you freeload while you figure it out.”

“I wasn’t planning on it.” A lie, but better than the truth, that he hadn’t even been thinking that far ahead.

Dinner was tense. Mrs. Petrelli filled the silence by asking Nathan about law school, asking if there was anything left undone for the wedding. Heidi said that she didn’t have bridesmaid gifts yet, and she and Mrs. Petrelli talked about possibilities for that.

“What are you giving the groomsmen, Nathan?” asked Mrs. Petrelli.

“It’s a surprise,” said Nathan, glancing at Peter.

“It doesn’t matter if Peter knows,” said Mr. Petrelli.

“Sure, I don’t matter,” said Peter. He threw down his napkin, pushed back his chair and stormed out of the dining room.

“Nathan, you talk to him,” he heard his mother say wearily. “He’s been like this ever since you got engaged . . .”

“She thinks you’re jealous that I’m getting all the attention right now,” said Nathan, when he caught up to Peter in his bedroom.

“If that’s true I’ve been jealous my whole life.”

“Have you?” Nathan looked him right in the eyes.

“Maybe, a little.” He reached out to touch Nathan’s shoulder, just to feel the solidity of him. Nathan glanced down at his hand but didn’t pull away. “That’s not what this is about, though.”

“ _I_ know that.”

“It’s not what you think either. I just—I can’t be another fucking lawyer.” He smiled. “No offense.”

Nathan smiled too. “None taken.”

“I want to do something that matters,” said Peter.

“I’ve been talking to Mark England,” said Nathan. “In the DA’s office. I told you about the Barollo case. He was prosecuting. I’m going to take a job there after I graduate.”

“That’s great, Nathan,” said Peter. He felt a tiny fillip of annoyance—Nathan already had a smoothly planned rebellion, better than Peter dropping out of school—but it was buried under a larger feeling of pride. And Peter would get there some day, some day stand up to their father in a way that mattered. “Have you told Dad yet?”

“No, I’m waiting until after the wedding.”

“Why?”

“He’s paying for it.”

Peter made a face. “Nathan, that’s . . .”

“That’s reality, Peter.”

“You really think he’ll cut you off?”

“Not really. But I’m—with me he’ll know it’s a good stepping stone. With you . . .”

“He thinks I’m a fuck-up. I get it. You get the benefit of the doubt.”

Nathan looked at him without saying anything for a moment. Peter could appreciate how Nathan walked the thin line between Peter and their father, but right now he wished Nathan was on his side.

“I guess I need to get a job,” said Peter.

“I’ll help you out.”

Peter opened his mouth to protest and then shut it again. He wasn’t sure how hard it would be to live without his parents’ money, but Maria didn’t make it look easy. He’d need all the help he could get.

Maria helped him get a job as a nurse’s aid at St. Vincent’s. Peter spent his nights changing bedpans, making up beds, folding laundry. It was menial work, but it left Peter’s mind free to wander, to imagine a life where he was making a difference, where people looked up to him the way they did to Nathan.

  
 **New York, 2000.**

Peter doesn’t like remembering those lost years, and has few memories from them. He slept with a succession of men and women, whoever wanted him, but they tended to drift away as easily as they appeared in his life once they realized how little energy Peter was willing to devote to them.

He had an apartment in Inwood, near Maria, that he shared with her brother and cousin. They spoke rapid-fire Spanish that Peter’s high school classes hadn’t equipped him to understand. Neither one gave Peter much notice as long as he kicked in his share of the rent on time.

Nathan’s memories of those years center on Heidi and their family, the work he loved in the D.A.’s office, his growing frustration at their father’s relationship with Linderman. When he thought of Peter it was with regret, as of a cause already lost.

By the time he turned twenty-one, Peter had been at the hospital long enough to have his pick of shifts, and he started working days so he could bartend at night. He used the extra money to put down a security deposit on an apartment of his own in Long Island City, just over the Queensboro Bridge from Manhattan. Maria had moved to Buffalo to be closer to her family, and Peter figured it was time to sever his ties with her family.

After a few months tending bar in a run-down Irish pub in Astoria, Peter applied for a job at G-bar, one of the trendiest gay bars in Chelsea. He didn’t have high hopes—every male bartender in New York City lined up for the job.

When the manager at G-bar met Peter, all he said was, “Take off your shirt.” Peter unbuttoned it slowly, pretending the man was Nathan. He felt his pulse quicken, his face heat, and his lips part. The manager looked slowly up and down Peter’s body. “You’re hired,” he said. He looked back one more time, and Peter wondered if he’d need to do something more intimate than undress, but the manager turned away again, his thought unvoiced. Peter started right away.

He worked weekdays nights for a few months until one of the weekend guys quit. “It’s a meat-market, kid,” he told Peter when he was training him up on the weeknight protocols. Mostly, weekends meant closing later, doing more advance prep, and drunker, more aggressive come-ons from the patrons. Peter didn’t mind. The tips were much better.

It was a Friday night, and Peter had just poured ten apple martinis in a row when he heard a familiar voice—Nathan’s voice—saying his name, low but forceful, cutting through the noise in the bar. It had to be someone else, though—Nathan would never come here. Occasionally Peter encountered men who reminded him of Nathan in some detail of tone, looks or mannerism. He learned to avoid them; the similarity just made it worse. He steeled himself not to be disappointed this time either, but when he turned, it was Nathan, a disapproving expression creasing his forehead.

“You said you worked here, but this isn’t what I expected.” Nathan's eyes swept down Peter’s bare chest to where the V of his stomach muscles disappeared into the top of his jeans.

Peter smirked. He might feel gross, sticky with sweat that ran in streams down his neck, making his hair sodden and his skin gleam, but he knew he looked good.

He got plenty of tips and propositions every night at G-Bar, but never more than when he wore these jeans, and he turned to put away the bottle of Apple Pucker on the mirrored shelf behind him so Nathan could see his rear. The jeans rode low on his hips, and buckled across the back so a triangle of skin and ass cleavage showed below the buckle, above where the seat of the jeans started.

“Peter, you have to come with me,” said Nathan.

“No boyfriends in the bar,” said the manager automatically when he heard the tone of Nathan’s voice.

“You hear that, Nathan?” Peter hooked his thumbs into his belt loops and tugged his jeans up and inch, just so Nathan could watch them fall down to their natural resting place. “No boyfriends.”

“It’s Dad,” said Nathan. “He’s in the—he’s had a heart attack.” The world stopped for a moment as Nathan stared at him, waiting for the words to sink in.

“When?” asked Peter, then shook his head. It didn’t matter. He spoke a few words to the floor manager, explaining, pulled his shirt off a hook on the break-room door and walked outside with Nathan.

“It happened this morning,” said Nathan.

“And you’re just getting me now?”

Nathan didn’t give any explanation. “He’s out of the woods,” said Nathan grimly. “But you should see him.”

Mr. Petrelli was in the Sound Shore Medical Center in New Rochelle. Peter remembered his mother telling him about organizing a benefit for it at the Waldorf. All that money bought Mr. Petrelli a private room with what was probably a nice view during the day. Mrs. Petrelli sat at his bedside. Mr. Petrelli’s hands were tucked under the covers and his eyes were closed when Peter and Nathan came in.

“Mom, are you okay?” Peter asked quietly as he knelt by the side of her chair. She cupped Peter’s face with her hand, and then drew him up so he could kiss her cheek and lay his forehead against hers. “Thank you for coming, Peter,” she said.

“Of course, Mom. I’m always here for you. You know that.” He stood again. “How’s he doing?”

“The doctors say he’ll make a full recovery.”

Nathan pulled some chairs in from the hallway and they sat around the bed until Mr. Petrelli woke up. Peter kissed his father on the cheek. “I’m glad you’re okay, Dad.”

“Thank you, Peter.” The response sounded automatic, and he said nothing else. The silence in the room grew heavy. Peter watched significant looks pass between Nathan and their parents and wondered what secret they were keeping from him now, if they’d ever think he was old enough to share the family’s burdens. The silence persisted until a doctor came into the room, a carefully concerned expression on his face.

“I need some time alone with Mr. Petrelli,” he said.

“Are you his cardiologist?” asked Peter.

The doctor glanced at Mrs. Petrelli then looked back at Peter. “No, his psychiatrist.”

“Let’s leave your father alone,” said his mother. She guided Nathan and Peter out into the hall by their shoulders.

“Why is Dad seeing a psychiatrist?” Peter asked.

“We all need some help from time to time.” She gave Nathan a sour little smile.

“But it’s his heart, right?”

Another glance passed between Nathan and their mother. “I’m going to drive Peter home,” said Nathan suddenly. “I’ll be back later.”

“What about Dad? Don’t I get to see him again?”

“He’s going to be resting,” said his mom. She tipped her cheek up for another kiss and Peter gave it to her.

“What _was_ that?” Peter asked as he followed Nathan out of the hospital. “What’s really going on? Why does a psychiatrist need to see Dad? A psychiatrist doesn’t see you if you’ve just had a heart attack. Not at St. Vincent’s anyway.”

“This isn’t St. Vincent’s. Everyone’s got problems, Peter,” said Nathan in a tone designed to end the discussion.

Nathan was driving the latest in a succession of black sports cars, paid for by their father’s money. Peter ran his hands over the leather. “You don’t mind. Taking _his_ money.”

“That’s our father you’re talking about, Pete. Have some respect. At least until he’s well.”

“You know where it comes from.” Nathan’s hands held the steering wheel harder than they had to, the knuckles showing white. “Whatever. Thanks for taking me home.”

“I didn’t want Ma to notice what you’re wearing.”

Peter looked down at himself. The white shirt he wore to and from the bar long and loose enough to cover the top of his jeans. “She wouldn’t care.”

“I can’t have you working in that place. What if someone sees you?”

“You’re the one that Page Six followed around. ‘Til you ruined their fun by getting married. They don’t care about me.”

“They will if they find out,” said Nathan.

“I don’t have money or do drugs, or date strippers. I’m boring. They have the Hilton sisters to follow around these days. Anyway, it’s the only place I can bartend and make money. Everywhere else wants girls.” Peter stretched and saw Nathan’s eyes flick over to him to watch the movement. “I make great tips.”

Nathan didn’t say anything to that, but tightened his hands on the wheel again. He pulled up in front of Peter’s apartment in Long Island City.

“Hey, look, a parking space. You want to come up? You haven’t seen the place yet.”

“Sure,” said Nathan tightly.

They walked up the three flights of stairs. The street smelled like urine and garbage, but this building wasn’t that bad. The three sets of outside locks helped. Inside the tile floor was cracked and dusty, but it smelled old not soiled. The apartment was small for Queens, a four-hundred square foot studio, with a separate kitchen and bathroom.

Peter turned on the light which flickered a few times before staying on. “Home sweet home,” he said. “I’m going to take a shower.” Peter could smell himself, the sweat from the night’s shift gone hospital-room stale. He took off his watch and put it on his bedside table and had started to pull off his shirt when Nathan was suddenly right next to him, his hand on Peter’s cheek.

“Pete.” His hands gripped Peter’s jaw and he pushed his thumb into Peter’s mouth, watching greedily as Peter licked and tongued it. Peter pulled away after a moment of this.

“I’m taking a shower, Nathan. I’m all sweaty from my shift.”

Nathan’s hand worked its way under Peter’s shirt, to where Peter’s jeans sat low on the curve of his ass, and slid his fingers under the fabric, digging into bare skin. “Okay,” he said, as if giving Peter permission.

 _So, Nathan wanted him again._ Maybe he’d never stopped; it just took, as always, some catalyst to bring him back. Nathan was standing in the doorway when Peter opened the shower curtain. His sleeves rolled up, tie loosened, hair messy like he’d been running his hands through it. His eyes traced over Peter’s body proprietarily.

Peter hated Nathan for a moment, for making him feel this way. No one else evoked this naked hunger, this need to give himself up completely.

And then Nathan’s hands and lips were on him again, making up for lost time. He kissed Peter until Peter could barely breathe, until all of his desires narrowed down to wanting this to continue, wanting Nathan inside him, his again. Nathan jerked Peter off before they even got to the bed, holding him up while he came. “Want you to last,” said Nathan.

He pushed Peter down on the bed and then stood there, taking off his clothes, looking at Peter like he was deciding Peter’s fate. “Turn over,” he said. Peter did.

He felt a wet finger circling his entrance and Nathan kissing his back, more tenderly than Peter expected. Then his finger was replaced with a tongue and Peter made a strangled noise, pushing his hips up toward Nathan’s mouth. He hadn’t expected this.

He wanted to say something sarcastic about Nathan picking up tips from porn, to show Nathan he wouldn’t forgive him so easily. But instead he heard himself saying, “Please, please,” not knowing what he was begging for except more. Nathan’s tongue _there_ , hot and wet and insistent, made Peter’s stomach shudder, his hands clench and unclench in the sheets. Then his tongue was gone and Peter whimpered for it, shameless, wordless begging to have it back.

“Quiet,” said Nathan, and Peter fell silent. Nathan pushed two fingers in, rough enough that Peter wondered if Nathan was trying to make it hurt. Nathan could make it punishment, if that’s what he needed to make himself feel better about wanting Peter. All Peter cared about was having Nathan back.

“You want me now?” Nathan asked, as if Peter could think of saying no to him.

“Yes.”

“Do you?” Nathan twisted his fingers, and Peter pressed back onto them, taking as much as he could.

“Yes, please Nathan, yes.” Then Nathan was inside him like he’d never been gone, pushing too hard, wanting too much, making Peter shiver and arch with pleasure.

“Please,” said Peter again. Peters voice sounded broken to his own ears, and Nathan heard it too. He murmured something low and slowed before the end, putting his hands over Peter’s, entwining their fingers, so when Peter came it was gentler than he expected. Nathan made small movements inside him so the sensations faded more slowly, a sweet honey ending.

Peter felt drained but happy when Nathan lay down next to him. He’d been waiting years for this. The night was hot, and sweat prickled on Peter’s body. He ran his finger under the hair slicked to Nathan’s forehead.

“I have to go,” said Nathan, only a few minutes after they were done.

“You think she won’t know,” said Peter. “You come home like this a lot? Smelling like another man’s come?”

“No,” said Nathan angrily. “I love her.”

“Then stay,” said Peter. “She won’t want to see you like this. She’ll know, Nathan. You’re not as good a liar as you think.”

Nathan wavered for half a second, then stood up and dug his phone out of the pocket of his pants, which lay in a pile on the floor. “I’m staying in the city with Peter tonight.” He paused for Heidi’s reply. “Yeah, he’s pretty upset about Dad.”

“I missed you,” Nathan said in a raspy whisper when he came back to bed. The lights were off and the room was lit only by the streetlights shining in the window. In the dark Nathan seemed able to say things he couldn’t in the light of day.

“Don’t stay away so long, then,” said Peter. He pressed their chests together like on that long ago day in Nantucket. They fit better now that Peter was full grown.

“You should stop working in that place.” Nathan bent down to taste Peter’s shoulder.

“Give me a good reason to,” said Peter. “Tell me it won’t be another three years before you fuck me again.”

“I don’t think it will be another five minutes,” said Nathan, his voice holding a strange mixture of mirth and despair.

“You know what I mean.”

“Yes, I won’t wait so long.” He said something else, like “I can’t,” and Peter tried to get him to repeat it, but then Nathan was pushing up inside him again, this time face to face, and Peter couldn’t think of anything but this, how he never wanted to let go.

He dreamed that night again, _Nathan burning—Nathan healing; lines of people under a foreign sun, a power in his hands that Peter can’t explain_ and woke with a gasp, expecting to feel the dust still between his fingers, but instead it was just his sheets, the heat merely from Nathan’s body next to him. He turned over to fit himself closer to Nathan and fell asleep again.

Peter woke in the morning, feeling as if no time had passed between the last time he’d woken up next to Nathan and this—or that the time between mattered little compared with this time together. Nathan had flung the sheets off in his sleep and Peter watched him there, then reached out to stroked the hair on his thighs, watch his cock swell as Peter ran his fingers lightly over the skin.

“You’re going to stop working there,” said Nathan.

“Good morning to you, too,” said Peter gently. “I need the money, Nathan. If . . .” The message from the dream crystallized in his mind, an ambition he’d been mulling over. “If I’m going back to school.”

Nathan rolled on his side and propped head up on his fist. He trailed his other hand over Peter’s chest, rolling on of Peter’s nipple between his fingers and watching with that peculiarly Nathan-like fascination as it grew hard and Peter’s dick along with it.

“Dad would help you,” he said absently, attention more on Peter’s body than on their conversation.

“Not with this.” It was worse in their family to admit to having a humble ambition than to have no ambition at all.

“With what?”

“Nursing school.”

Nathan pulled back his hand and looked Peter in the eye. “Nursing school, really?”

“Yes. It’s what I want.”

“Peter, how are you going to support a family on—?”

“Do you see a family, Nathan? I’ll support myself.” Peter couldn’t see himself with a family at all. He’d have a wife and what? Run home to Nathan on the weekends to get what he really needed? Or worse, need it and not get it, make a wife take that burden. Nathan might be able to compartmentalize like that; Peter couldn’t.

“I’ll help you out,” said Nathan. He moved his hand back to Peter’s chest. “I’ll get you a better apartment. I’ll take care of you.”

Peter wanted to complain, to tell Nathan that he knew where the money was coming from, and it wasn’t an ADA’s salary. Their father’s money, _Linderman’s_ money, going for this, to make Peter a nurse. Maybe it was the best sort of rebellion. That same money supported Nathan while he prosecuted criminals.

“You’ll let me pay?” Nathan asked, like it was part of their foreplay. Nathan made him feel like a mistress, and Peter didn’t mind. Would Nathan offer to buy him clothes and jewelry next? Nathan’s hand was wrapped around Peter’s dick again, light teasing touches making him hard.  
He slipped his fingers behind Peter’s balls and rubbed along the skin there. Peter spread his legs wider.

“For part,” said Peter. “I’ll pay my rent.”

“You’ll work somewhere else?”

Peter looked at Nathan and smiled. Mysteriously, he hoped. “You’ll have to check on me,” he said, gasping on the last word as Nathan pushed a finger in.

“I will,” said Nathan, voice a low growl. “As often as I can.”

  
 **New York, 2006.**

Peter’s years in nursing school were sweet ones. He still wasn’t sure nursing was what his dreams meant, but it kept him busy and he liked how it got his hands dirty with everything that the Petrellis usually tried to stay away from, the poverty, the blood and guts, the bile and shit that being rich insulated them from. As a rebellion, it was all Peter could hope for.

Nathan kept visiting, spent a few nights a month wrapped around Peter, their weight bowing the springs of the old bed in his crappy apartment. Nathan talked to Peter when they lay like that, about things he told no one else—his fears for his father, his future, Linderman.

Then Peter thought he’d won; Nathan was his in those moments: Nathan’s lips pressed to where Peter’s hair met his skin on the back of his neck, Nathan giving voice to unguarded thoughts. Those moments gave Peter the ability to face Heidi, even to love Heidi.

Peter graduated in June and passed the NCLEX in July. He started with New York Hospice Care soon after that.

Simone was the one who called the Hospice center, looking for a caretaker. Peter’s preceptor went with him on the call, since Mr. Deveaux would be his first client, if it worked out. Peter liked his preceptor: a no-nonsense woman in her fifties with iron-gray hair and an unmistakable kindness behind her surface efficiency. She told Peter when she met him that she didn’t expect him to last in hospice care, most people didn’t.

“It’s too sad,” she said. Her voice was roughened by years of smoking. She knew it was bad for her health, knew it might kill her, but claimed she loved it too much to give it up. “You seem very sensitive.” She looked at him with gray eyes that seemed to see beneath his skin.

“Everyone says that.” Peter smiled quickly, not a friendly smile. “I’ll try to prove you wrong.”

“Don’t,” she said. “Do well by your patient. Don’t leave him before he leaves you. Then decide if you can take on another. It’s one day at a time for all of us.”

Peter couldn’t say no after meeting Simone, not even if he wanted to. He’d seen her before—her family’s orbit brushed the Petrelli’s from time to time—but this time took one look at her sad eyes, her glistening lips, and wanted to help.

“It’s pancreatic cancer,” she said. Her eyes welled with tears and Peter handed her a tissue. She dabbed them carefully, so as not to smudge her makeup.

“We’ll make him comfortable.” Peter reached across the Formica desk in the interview room to put his hand on top of hers. He remembered the nursing manuals on physical reassurance of patients and their families, but this hadn’t been that. He was meant to care for Mr. Deveaux and Simone, he knew, with a flash of intuition that rarely failed him.

The Deveaux building gave him an eerie sense of déjà vu when Simone showed him up the steps. Peter felt a similar jolt meeting Mr. Deveaux as he had when meeting Simone. This was where he was meant to be.

“Peter Petrelli,” said Mr. Deveaux. His voice was warm, and he seemed so vital Peter had a hard time believing he was dying. He wondered for a moment if Simone had even told her father, if maybe Peter was being brought in under the cover of being some kind of long term caregiver. He didn’t look like someone facing death should, in Peter’s mind. “I’m so glad you’re here,” he said, pressing Peter’s hand in his. “You have to help my daughter.”

“I’m here to help you, Mr. Deveaux.”

“She’s the one who will need healing.”

***

But he’d left Simone, just as she needed him, going off on his hero quest. Just like he’d left Tovah. He could have waited. The work he did in India was penance for that, for so many other failures.

Maybe he would have waited except he knew that Nathan was involved. Knew that their powers would be what brought Nathan back to him, made Nathan his more than sex had, more than being brothers had. They would share this secret until it was time to dazzle the world with it.

“Nathan, I think I can fly,” he said, thinking, begging underneath, _come fly with me, Nathan, come fly with me like we always should have._ He woke from dreams of flying with Nathan, dreams that made his skin tingle and his dick hard, and it was difficult to think of Charles Deveaux dying after that, of Simone’s druggie boyfriend, of anything except him and Nathan, saving the world together.

***

Nathan was never more distant and difficult to Peter than during the six months of his campaign, alternately sucking up to Peter and trying to use him, and pushing him away.

“I’m not going to use my family for political gain.” Nathan said it often enough in the beginning and Peter still wonders how that sentiment got so lost. He didn’t have to win to trap Linderman, but Nathan never lost at anything if he could help it.

Peter looks in Nathan’s memories and sees Mrs. Petrelli’s weekly interviews with him, in Nathan’s office with the Venetian blinds pulled and the door closed so when Nathan’s voice rose to a yell, at least the staffers could pretend not to hear, pretend not to know who really pulled the strings.

“Well,” says Mrs. Petrelli. “What are we going to do about Peter? People are going to find out about his suicide attempt.”

“You’d be amazed, Ma, the amount people _don’t_ care about our family.” He smiles inwardly. Nathan finds his own ego amusing, Peter discovers on searching through his memory, even as he goes to great lengths to protect it. “Most of the time, I’d like a little more press, but right now . . .” He spreads his hands and shrugs.

“It’s going to get out, Nathan, I guarantee it.”

And Nathan has learned what that means, that she won’t shrink from sabotaging his plans when they don’t mesh with hers. Thank God she doesn’t know about the FBI. “Fine, then, what do you suggest?”

She purses her lips. She won’t say, “I’m glad you asked” but her self-satisfied sigh as she removes her gloves says it for her. “I think you should pre-empt the press. Reveal your father’s depression and Peter’s at the fundraiser tonight. It will make you look more human.”

“My wife is in a wheelchair. How much more human am I supposed to look?”

“A little more than you do.” She has a way of looking at him down her patrician nose that makes him feel twelve again.

“I’m not using my family for political gain.”

“Don’t be naïve, Nathan. If you don’t, someone else will.”

“Threats, Ma? Peter would never forgive me.”

“Peter will forgive you anything. You need this.”

“Forget it, Ma.” But he knows that he can’t forget it, because of the real reasons behind these weekly meetings: her hands on the campaign purse strings, the threat that makes him obey when he’d rather she simply asked.

“Nathan,” she says, letting her voice break slightly, “I’m worried for him. He doesn’t want to face this.”

“This will just make him worse.”

“No, this will wake him up. And maybe if other people know, they can stop him before . . .” She trails off but Nathan knows they’re both seeing a picture of Mr. Petrelli, face down on the bathroom floor. Nathan swallows—it’s not hard to substitute Peter’s face for his father’s, their faces were so similar.

“Alright, Ma, I’ll get my speechwriters working on it.” Her face hardens immediately, and her voice is steady when she tells Nathan goodbye.

No choice, he tells himself when he reads over the speech and pictures Peter’s stricken face. He’s protecting his family, just like his father.

 **Nantucket, January 2011.**

Peter’s jaw is still aches from Nathan’s punch. It will take a thought, less than a thought, just a loss of concentration, and the bruise will fade as if it’s never been. When he wakes up tomorrow, it will be gone. Peter wants to keep it.

Nathan is in the upper atmosphere now. Peter can feel him getting further away, but Nathan can’t hide, and he’s not trying to run away. He has no one to run to anymore.

The sky is growing darker with no colorful drama, the sun setting behind thick winter clouds, hidden. The day will just be dawning in Bangalore. Mohinder is waking up alone in the bed they shared, drinking the _chai_ he likes without wrinkling his nose at the smell of Peter’s coffee. He won’t slide by Pete, closer than he needs to, and kiss him on the back of the neck, or test Peter’s jumpiness by putting a hand on his stomach. And Nathan won’t touch him either, now.

Peter remembers meeting Mohinder in a cab, the day of the eclipse. Later, when they were together, he wondered if he should have known then, if the eclipse was a sign not for him and Nathan, but for him and Mohinder.

Eclipses and other phenomenon of the sun make him think of Nathan, though, whose sun Peter has finally put behind a cloud. _I didn’t mean to_ , Peter thinks, guiltily. He looks down at his hands, wondering: if he could look beneath the skin, which would be dominant, the power to heal, or the power to burn, the power to save lives, or the power to ruin them?

What if Mohinder had believed him that day on the train? Would Mohinder have gone with him to Texas? Would they have caused more deaths or fewer? Sometimes Peter hears Mohinder think about it, when he imagines Peter asleep.

There’s no changing it, though. If Mohinder had believed, would Nathan have saved New York, would Peter then have learned to heal, would he be here now with Nathan’s memories in his mind and their theft on his conscience? If any of them have a destiny, it’s too complex for Peter to map—even his dreams, Isaac’s paintings only give him snippets. Hiro tried, and ended up lost in time for decades. When he came back he was old, and he said that little had changed. Peter leaves time alone.

Above, Peter feels Nathan tiring and growing cold. He thinks about going up there to join him. The last time they ever flew together was away from Kirby Plaza.

 _Nathan, I can’t stop it_. All around the plaza stood powerful people, but none could save him. Only Nathan.

Nathan’s eyes were kind, full of dark, beautiful resignation. He’d never looked more beautiful to Peter than at that moment. _Come fly with me_ , he thought, and Peter heard him, through the buzz of fear, the shouting of a million voices around him.

“I love you, Nathan,” he said. And they died together.  



	4. Chapter 4

**  
Part 2  
**   


**New York, November 2006.**

He carried Nathan’s broken body to the nearest hospital, said, “Radiation burns,” to the nurse then left him there. He turned invisible, listening to the sounds he remembered from the ER, doctors paged, nurses mobilized, before fleeing.

He flew to his mother next, where she was with Heidi and the boys in Nantucket. The helicopter he had seen in Nathan’s mind had taken them here.

“Peter!” she said, surprised for once.

“Where’s Heidi?” he asked.

“She took the kids down to the beach.”

“She should be here.”

“Tell me, Peter. She can’t handle this.” She put her hand to his cheek. “Is Nathan . . . ?”

Peter turned his face away to hide the pricking of tears in his eyes. “He’s . . .” No help for it, tears came; hiding them didn’t matter anymore. Nothing mattered. “He’s at Bellevue. He’s not going to . . .” He saw her jaw tighten. “I have to go. Find someone who can help him.”

“No one can help him now, Peter. He had his choice.” She turned away too, though not to hide tears.

“How can you say that? He _saved_ me. I have to save him.” He reached out for her mind, for those same secret whispers he’d heard in Nathan’s, and found blankness, a lack of sound so complete it felt like a physical presence in his head. “He’s here, isn’t he? That guy Claire told me about. The one who takes memories.”

She nodded. “Yes, Peter, he is. Sometimes the lack of memory can be a blessing.” She smiled that quick, mirthless smile of hers, and put her hand out toward him, but he recoiled from her, and ran out of the front door, down the worn porch steps. He saw Heidi waving to him from the beach. She was bundled up against the cold wind, but the kids ran around in the surf, kicking water at each other with their galoshed feet.

“Peter, come down and say ‘hi,’” called out Heidi, but Peter couldn’t stop. He made himself invisible and shot into the sky.

He landed on the flat tar roof of Mohinder’s apartment building in Brooklyn. The sky was starting to go a wintry pink as the sun set below the thick cloud cover. Soon a full day would have passed since Kirby Plaza. _Nathan . . ._ , Peter couldn’t even finish the thought. He felt Nathan’s presence across the river in Bellevue like a hook in his heart.

Peter climbed down the fire escape and knocked on Mohinder’s window. He could see Mohinder’s face lit by the glow from his computer screen. Peter knocked on the window just as Mohinder was reaching for a mug of tea. He jumped when he saw Peter and knocked it over. Peter righted it with his mind as Mohinder walked over to unlatch and open the window.

“Peter,” said Mohinder. “I’m glad you’re all right. Come in.”

Peter stepped over the lintel and into the apartment. “I’m fine, but Nathan’s not. He’s . . .” Mohinder looked at him, dark eyes compassionate—Peter could feel that compassion like warmth on his skin. “He’s dying.”

“I’m so sorry,” said Mohinder. Peter tried to look through him, to the knowledge in his head, listen to what he might be hiding, but that ability wasn’t obeying him at all. He only had bone weariness to thank for the control over his new fiery power. “Peter, I—I wish I could have done more.” _Always apologizing to Petrellis,_ Peter heard him think.

“Well it’s not enough,” said Peter before he realized it was just a thought, his abilities betraying him again, monkey’s paw gifts. “I need your help. I can heal myself but—someone has to be able to heal other people. You have that list. Tell me who it is, and I’ll find them.”

“The list isn’t complete, Peter.”

“So? Give me a name. Come on. Someone has to heal.”

“I’m sorry, Peter. I wish I could help you. There’s no one on my father’s list who has the abilities you need. Not that I know of.”

“Give me the list anyway. I’ll—I’ll talk to all of them.”

“People have tried to kill me for this list.”

 _Don’t make me be one of them,_ Peter thought. No, he wouldn’t. He clenched his hands into fists. His power was supposed to help, to heal, and instead he’d broken everything. “I wouldn’t hurt anyone,” said Peter. He projected every ounce of sincerity he possessed.

“Is it under control?” Mohinder asked. He held himself very still, but if he was scared, he hid it well.

“Yes, it’s not going to happen again.” Because every time he felt the buzzing in his head, the burning in his hands, he saw Nathan too, and the despair drowned the power. “But Nathan. If I don’t find someone . . . I’ll have killed him. Me and these _powers_.”

Mohinder looked at him for a long moment. “People on this list are dead, Peter.” _Because of me._ “I won’t let. . .”

“Don’t let anyone else die,” said Peter, not caring if it was nakedly manipulative. He’d make it up to Mohinder later.

Mohinder stared at Peter for another minute, then crossed back to his desk, pressed a few keys on his computer and the printer started spitting out paper. Peter glanced at the list on the printer tray. Nathan’s name was there, but not his.

“I know you’re desperate Peter, but try not to frighten them.” Mohinder took a pen and drew a line through the names Theodore, Dale, Zane and a few others. He hesitated over the name of Gabriel. “They didn’t find Sylar’s body.”

He handed the list to Peter, hesitating before letting go. “Thank you,” said Peter. “I’ll help you. Anything you need, as long as . . .”

“Go, Peter.”

Peter went back to the window, jumped off the fire escape and flew back to the hospital. The wind whipped by his face, but there was no pleasure in it now, nothing left.

Heidi and his mother had taken the helicopter back to New York. “He’s asking for you, Peter,” said Mrs. Petrelli when Peter appeared in the waiting room of the burn unit. Heidi looked up when Peter appeared, her face as blank as a porcelain doll’s, all the happiness he’d seen in her on the beach leeched away with the blood from her face. “I think . . .” Mrs. Petrelli pressed her lips together. “I think he wants to say goodbye.”

 _He already did_ , thought Peter.

Peter put on a disposable mask from the nurses’ station and went into the hospital room. Nathan was in one of the gel beds they used for severe burn patients. Peter had seen the burns, _caused the burns_ ; Nathan wouldn’t be getting up from that bed. The doctors would probably assist him into a morphine coma from which he would never awake. Peter knew that doctors took that last step more than they’d ever admit to any lawyer. Sometimes it was best.

“I’m so sorry, Nathan,” Peter began. He sat down next to the bed, wishing he could hold Nathan’s hand, but infection was the biggest risk for burn patients, and he’d only cause more pain.

“Peter, Linderman could heal.” Nathan’s voice broke through Peter’s thoughts. Peter could barely hear him—his voice rasped through shredded vocal cords.

“You don’t have to say it, Nathan, just think it.”

 _Linderman could heal,_ Nathan thought. In Peter’s mind his voice sounded ragged with pain, but _his_ at least. _He made Heidi walk again._

“I’ll go get him.” Peter didn’t care what they’d owe, what it would take.

 _He’s dead. You met him, Peter. Can’t you . . . ?_. Peter remembered meeting Linderman once, remembered his proprietary hand on Nathan’s shoulder, the irrational surge of jealousy that came when Peter saw anyone touching Nathan like that. Linderman seemed like someone who rotted everything he touched—Peter couldn’t imagine him healing.

But for Nathan who lay here dying, third degree and radiation burns all over his body, Peter could do anything. Nathan wouldn’t survive more than a few days like this. Peter tried to imagine Linderman healing Heidi—maybe it would help if Nathan remembered, too.

“Think about him, Nathan. You knew him better.”

Peter closed his eyes and saw pictures: _Linderman making a plant grow with the wave of his hand, Linderman touching Heidi’s hand and then Heidi’s foot moving, Nathan’s surge of fear the idea of Linderman having yet another hold over him._

Peter put his hand over Nathan’s arm, where the radiation burns were the least and thought about Linderman healing, wondering how Linderman could have turned such a good power toward such evil goals. It was like his dreams from long ago—Nathan burnt and Nathan healed.

Peter moved his hand away, looked down and saw the skin was whole, the strange red welts melted away. He started to say something to Nathan, but when he reached out to listen to Nathan’s thoughts, he found Nathan had retreated into himself, behind a wall of pain. And despair, _Peter is too weak to control it . . ._

Peter reached out again, this time over Nathan’s chest and face, where the worst of the burns were. He closed his eyes and pictured Nathan whole, healed. He thought about Nathan swimming through the frigid Atlantic ocean after him and catching him every time. He thought about Nathan’s body, the arms that had wrapped around him, the chest he’d put his head on, how Nathan held Peter and flew into the sky.

When he opened his eyes, Nathan was whole again. He knew it even before he looked; Nathan’s thoughts grew calm as the pain left him.

“How do you feel, Nathan?” he asked. Nathan’s face was unburnt, his sardonic mouth the same, his hands, his throat, everything. Peter wanted to leap onto the bed, to feel every inch of Nathan’s whole, healthy body pressed against his, but that would have to wait. Not too long, but at least until they discharged him.

Nathan frowned. “Kind of groggy,” he said. Peter reached up to turn down the morphine drip.

He squeezed Nathan’s hand now. “I don’t know if—there might still be damage.”

“I’m better, Pete,” said Nathan.

Peter just stood there, holding his hand for a long moment. Soon the rest of the world would come between them again, but right now . . . “I have to tell Mom and Heidi,” Peter whispered. His eyelashes felt wet and he reached up to wipe them off. “Nathan, I can never repay . . .”

“You get into trouble and I save you, right?” said Nathan, hanging on to his hand.

“Right,” said Peter. “A doctor should take a look at you. I’ll be right back, I promise.” Peter went out into the waiting room.

“I need a doctor,” he called out, not waiting to see who came running before sitting down with Heidi and his mom.

“Is he . . .?” asked Heidi. “Is it time?”

Peter swallowed and shook his head. “No, he’s . . . I made him better.” He turned to Heidi. “Look, Linderman healed you. I can . . . I can do that too. I just sent a doctor in there to make sure he’s really okay.” Peter wiped the sweat from his upper lip.

Mrs. Petrelli came to her feet, her hand over her breast. Peter squatted down to see Heidi better. Her expression was blank. “He wants to see you,” said Peter.

“He’s going to live?” said Heidi. “After . . .”

“Yes,” said Peter. He extended his hand to her. She looked at it for a long moment before taking it and standing up. He’d seen this before, this blankness; after someone came to terms with their loved one’s impending death, it was hard to go back to imagining them alive again, hard to hope again. He wondered what his mother had said to her on the ride down to make her give up so completely.

He followed behind Mrs. Petrelli and Heidi. The doctor was in the room already, taking Nathan’s vital signs.

“I want to run an EKG and do a stress test on his lungs, but he seems completely healed,” said the doctor with a total lack of affect. He looked from Peter, to Mrs. Petrelli and then back to Nathan, poorly masking the fear that Peter could hear in his thoughts. “I don’t want to say anything that might worry you, but someone should study this. This recovery is not natural.”

“The important thing is that he’s well,” said Mrs. Petrelli. She looked sternly at the doctor, and he left the room. “I’ll have someone take care of that.”

“You mean erase his memory?”

“Well, we can’t have him telling someone about this.” Heidi looked from one of them to the other, as Peter opened his mouth to argue further, then shook her head and focused her attention on Nathan.

“Nathan, you have to tell me what’s going on,” said Heidi. “How did this happen? What is going on with you? Peter said . . .” She looked at Peter, eyes unwavering and cold. “Peter said this was his fault. I want to know what that means.”

Nathan coughed lightly, and Peter stepped closer to the bed. “You know Pete, always wanting to take the blame.”

“ _Don’t_ try to lie to me Nathan,” said Heidi. “You’ve been hiding—”

“Nathan is still not feeling well,” said Mrs. Petrelli over her. “Perhaps we should let him rest.”

“I’ll stay,” said Heidi. _Alone_ , Peter heard her think.

***

The hospital discharged Nathan the next day. He was a bad patient and Peter couldn’t really blame him; after Peter healed him, nothing was wrong with him anymore. He went back to the Gramercy Park house to plan his victory gala—something expensive that would be photographed by all the New York papers.

Peter found him in his office—their first time alone since the hospital. Nathan stood up from his chair and Peter hardly waited a moment before throwing his arms around Nathan and hugging him tightly. Nathan hesitated for a second and then hugged him back.

“I’m sorry, Nathan.” The memory of Nathan’s face before they flew into the air jumped appeared in Peter’s mind, Nathan’s eyes soft with love. “I owe you . . .”

“Nothing.” Nathan went to the door and locked it, and then pressed Peter up against the door and kissed him, desperately at first, but then slower, his lips brushing against Peter’s, teasing with his tongue and teeth. Peter unbuttoned Nathan’s shirt and slid his hands inside. He was whole, unburnt, skin smooth and warm under Peter’s fingers.

“What made you change your mind?” Peter asked.

“Claire,” said Nathan. “She saw you—more clearly than I did.”

Peter could reach and pull the whole conversation out of Nathan’s mind if he wanted to. It was right there, the good and the bad, Nathan’s doubts, the petty thoughts that everyone had.

“You saved the world.” He smiled, thinking of Claire. “You’re totally my hero.” Nathan looked at him strangely. “What now, Nathan?”

Nathan frowned. “Linderman is dead. You’re alive.” He said it as though ticking the items off a list. “New York is still standing. And I’m a Congressman.” His expression made Peter’s heart leap: a smirk with an edge of teasing that Peter couldn’t remember seeing since before their father’s death. It widened into a smile Peter definitely hadn’t seen in a while, the one Nathan wore when he had nothing on his mind beyond his own enjoyment.

Nathan pulled his tie out from under his collar. “What now? Let’s celebrate.”

***

“Good,” said Bennet when Peter called to tell him that everyone was still breathing, after Nathan proved it, leaving quick-healing lines of scratches, brands of bites on Peter’s skin. “Your brother can help me sort out the mess of Molly’s custody. I can’t tell you everything, but she needs a stable family who can keep her safe.”

“What about the blonde woman? The one with the parking meter?”

“Niki Sanders. She and her husband want to take custody, but I have their records. I’m not sure it would be a good fit.”

“We just saved the world and you’re fighting a custody battle?”

“Molly’s abilities need to be protected. Niki is mentally unstable, her husband is a convicted felon, and her son used his ability to commit election fraud. I’d prefer to give Molly a more secure environment to grow up in.”

“Wait, election fraud? Nathan’s election?”

“Yes, I thought you knew,” Bennet drawled. “Linderman used Micah to rig the election.”

“No, I didn’t know. Nathan doesn’t know either. He _can’t_ know.”

“Hmm,” said Bennet. Peter wanted to reach through the phone and throttle a more coherent answer out of him.

And then in a split second he _knew_ where Bennet was, on the map he had in his head from his last visit to Odessa. Primatech Paper, an office building. He saw it in his mind and then he was _there_. _Hiro’s ability_ , Peter thought as his surroundings blinked into something else.

Bennet didn’t seem surprised to see Peter when Peter walked into his office, but he raised his eyebrows a millimeter said, “Very impressive. From what I gather, Hiro took a lot longer to master his ability. In fact, I think he’s still missing.”

The office was underground, had a dingy linoleum floor and plastic chairs. Bennet looked every inch the paper salesman the legend on his door proclaimed him to be. He reached out for Bennet’s thoughts, and found them cool and detached, a mild observation of _interesting_ when looking at Peter, and nothing else given voice, even in his mind.

“You were saying,” said Peter, glaring.

Bennet gave him a look, but continued the conversation as if nothing happened. “Micah told me that—” slight smile, the name _Candace_ flashed through his mind and was pushed aside, “—one of Linderman’s employees brought him to a polling place and had him alter the results of the election to give Nathan Petrelli a landslide.”

“I don’t believe it. Someone would have noticed, someone would have said something.”

“Would they?” said Bennet, hardly giving it the inflection of a question.

“Something has to be done. Nathan has to say something.”

“Don’t be naïve, Peter. Having one of your kind in power will be good for you.”

Peter heard the smug certainty in Bennet’s voice and wondered if that’s what Claire had been running away from. Bennet sounded like Nathan at his most dictatorial. Worse, he sounded like Peter’s father. “Good for Claire, too,” said Peter.

“Exactly.”

“Who’s Candace?”

Bennet looked at him a long moment, amusement, perhaps, quirking the edges of his mouth. “A young woman with a very special ability. Perhaps you two should meet.”

“What ability is that?”

“Mental Projection,” said Bennet. For the moment, at least, he seemed willing to treat Peter as an ally. “She can make you see what she wants you to see. What, I wonder, would you do with an ability like that?” He paused and took off his glasses. “Would you appear as your brother and renounce your seat in congress? Perhaps I’ll keep you two apart after all. Misguided idealism is even more dangerous than unchecked ambition.”

Peter was seething, but he clenched his jaw and tried not to rise to the bait. “So, you’re not going to do anything about the election fraud?”

“Not if Nathan helps me with Molly.”

“I’m sure he will,” said Peter darkly.

He concentrated again and found himself in his room in the Gramercy Park house, the handset from the phone lying on the floor. He turned it off and replaced it in the charger.

Hiro’s power—he didn’t know why it didn’t frighten him more, but stepping through space at least, felt as natural as walking from one room into the next. He flashed downstairs, and then, invisibly, to the sidewalk outside Nathan’s campaign office, which workmen were now converting into his New York headquarters.

Peter hesitated outside the door, as stocky men in blue uniforms hauled moving-blanket covered furniture in and out. Nathan would be inside his inner office, sheltered from the cold blast of November air that blew in every time the door opened.

Nathan always won—Peter knew that like a law of the universe, right after gravity. Nathan had been a sports star, top of his class in every school he attended. He won medals in the Navy, he set records for the number of convictions in the DA’s office. Nathan won on his own merits, merits that made Peter jealous and proud. Nathan didn’t cheat.

Peter jumped into Nathan’s office. He was paging through papers on his desk, and Peter could hear the contents of those papers echoing in his mind, letters of congratulation, requests for help, obliquely worded offers of money for consideration, and these were just the ones his secretary had let through.

“Pete,” said Nathan when Peter made himself visible. He covered his surprise well and broke into a smile. “Just the man I wanted to see.” He hugged Peter to him, a quick press of shoulders and chests.

“The gala is going to be on Thursday night,” Nathan continued. “You’re going to be there, right?”

Peter smiled. “You’re not going to call me suicidal again, right? Because two can play that game.”

Nathan’s face went momentarily blank, and Peter knew he was caught in a memory of burning, falling. Peter mentally berated himself for bringing it up. The teasing between them always stung a little, but that went too far. But then Nathan smiled again, just as broadly, if less warm. “What can I do for you?”

“I just got off the phone with Bennet.” Peter continued. No need to mention showing up there.

“How is Claire?”

“She’s good. Says ‘hi.’” Peter had forgotten to ask.

“Good.”

“Nathan, didn’t all the polls have you way behind before the election?”

Nathan didn’t look away. His steady eye contact inspired confidence in most people, but Peter knew he did it to cover worry, a lie. “People change their minds. Look at the last presidential election.”

“Bad example, Nathan. Bennet told me something. He said Linderman used Micah to rig the election. That’s how you won.”

“Mmmmm.” Nathan pressed his lips together in a hard line.

“Nathan,” said Peter forcefully, trying to break him out of his reverie. “What are you going to do?”

Nathan raised his eyebrows and looked at Peter. “Do? Nothing, Peter. I’m elected.”

“It’s dishonest.”

“Do we have to have this argument again? I didn’t ask him to rig the election.”

Peter looked at Nathan accusingly, but read it in his mind, pure and simple truth. Nathan hadn’t asked for Linderman’s help, not that kind of help, anyway.

“You took his money?” Peter said. He clenched his fists and backed away toward the door.

Nathan’s eyes flicked toward him, a warning look. _This mind-reading is going to be a problem_ , Peter heard him think, clear as if he’d spoken the words aloud. “It was part of the FBI set-up, Peter.” Nathan leaned back on his desk. His sleeves were rolled up. He looked perfectly casual except that Peter knew what the flatness in his voice meant, could see the muscles in his forearms standing out. And Peter could hear in his mind, _What do I need to tell him this time?_

Peter rubbed his forehead. “You could at least—I don’t know—call for a recount or something.”

Nathan blinked. “Then I might lose.”

“At least you wouldn’t be a liar.” Peter’s anger rattled the pens on Nathan’s desk. Nathan looked down at them pointedly, then back at Peter.

“There’s nothing to be done about it now, Peter. I'm here and I'll do a good job for these people.” His tone was dismissive.

“Bullshit, Nathan.” Peter turned on his heel and walked out, closing the door firmly behind him with a touch of his thoughts. He didn’t slam it, though—he’d learned long ago how little childish gestures like that worked in their family.

 **Nantucket, January 2011.**

Nathan’s lips are blue when he lands. Dark is falling over their beach, and Nathan stumbles slightly when he climbs up the front porch. Peter helps him stay standing. He brushes his fingers over Nathan’s hand; it’s cold to the touch. He pushes a little heat out through his own—Ted’s legacy—until Nathan pulls his hand away.

“You’re going to tell me everything, now, and then we’re going to get my life back.” Peter reaches up to touch Nathan’s hair, wet and frozen from flying through clouds. Nathan shakes his head slightly and Peter pulls his hand back. “Who took over my presidency?”

“Come inside, Nathan. I still have steak, from Smith and Wollensky’s. It used to be your favorite place.”

Nathan looks at him for a moment, face impassive as if it’s carved from granite, and then turns away. Nathan’s almost-silent treatment is familiar from too many arguments before, but even this coldness warms Peter. This is something they can come back from.

Nathan sits at the kitchen table and doesn’t resist when Peter puts a blanket around his shoulders and gets him a cup of tea. “Tea and steak,” Peter deadpans. “It’s a classic pairing.”

Nathan doesn’t react. He eats his steak methodically, pausing every few bites to wash it down with a mouthful of tea. “Tell me, Peter,” he says. “Or go. I’m sure your Dr. Suresh wants his guinea pig back.”

Once, Peter would have risen to the bait. Now he’s just tired. “It’s not like that,” he says serenely. Nathan’s jaw tightens.

Peter takes a deep breath as he cuts another bite of steak; it tastes disgusting after living mostly vegetarian for so long. He puts down his knife and fork, and pushes the plate away. Nathan pulls it over and starts eating Peter’s portion as well, without asking.

“You’re welcome to my steak, by the way,” says Peter, with a hint of a smile. Nathan doesn’t pause from eating but gestures at Peter with his fork and knife: continue.

“A few days ago, Bennet called me,” Peter tells him.

“Who’s Bennet?”

Peter tells Nathan what he can about Bennet, and Candace’s power. He knows so little; if he’d stayed with Nathan instead of going to India, maybe . . . but no, Nathan never listened to him. Not then, not now.

“We’re just going to sit here and let this Candace take over?” asks Nathan after Peter stops talking. “You’d let them do that to me? To our family?”

“I left, Nathan. Left our family, everything. I came back to save you, but . . .”

“You’re going to leave again.”

“I can’t leave until I know you’re not going to _try_ anything.” Nathan makes a face and Peter could read these thoughts without any special powers: _That’s not much of an incentive . . ._

“It’s over, Nathan,” Peter continued. “It’s time to find something else to do with your life. You were helping the FBI take down Linderman. If that had worked you’d have to go into witness protection. This is the same.”

“This isn’t the same. They . . . you stole it from me.”

“It’s balance, Nathan. You stole it in the first place. You should have lost your first election. A kid who . . .” _Micah, missing or dead. Or fled somewhere with Niki because he didn’t want to be_ used. “Who makes Diebold machines look like an abacus. Linderman had him make you win. And you just took it.”

“I’m President, Peter. I’m not just going to give that up.” He pushes himself back from the table. His eyes dare Peter to argue again.

Peter pulls his computer off the counter where Nathan left it and calls up the file Bennet sent him. “I didn’t want to show you this.” He points Nathan at the records Bennet sent him of the election fraud: the voting receipts all tallied up, the signed affidavits.

“That’s not all. The man after you dies and this goes public.” He clicks on video. It’s security camera footage, black and white, grainy, but unmistakable. Peter still had longish hair when this was taken; it flops over his eyes and on screen Nathan’s fingers push it back for him. Peter steals a glance at Nathan here and now—his face betrays no more than mild interest, but his body has gone tense.

The video Nathan kisses Peter’s face, his neck, pulls his clothes off him, pushes Peter to his knees. Peter presses stop on a frame where Nathan’s hand is tangled in Peter’s hair. Peter doesn’t remember that particular time, but he does remember the marvelous, helpless feeling of being trapped just where he wanted to be with Nathan fucking his mouth.

Peter feels his face grow hot thinking about it, but he makes his voice hard to tell Nathan, “Your presidency is _over_. It’s time to accept that.”

“This isn’t faked? This Candace can make you see anything?”

Peter can hear the question in Nathan’s mind, asking himself if he wants it to be faked or not. Then a flash of sunlit memory, memory Peter thought he took: this house in summer, his head bobbing up and down on Nathan’s cock, the pleasure mixed with guilt that only heightened it.

 _My own brother_ “I wouldn’t . . .” He turns to look at Peter now, eyes clear. “That’s why you did it, isn’t it? I deserved this.”

  
 **New York, December 2006.**

Nathan’s memories are blank from some time in the air with Peter until he woke up in the in the hospital later. Peter didn’t see Heidi much after Nathan came home. She was present in photo ops with Nathan, and at the ball after the swearing in of the new congress, to show she could dance again, stiff and unsmiling in Nathan’s arms. Nathan had rarely spoken of her to Peter anyway.

He never told Peter when the break actually happened, but it follows in Nathan’s memories on the heels of leaving the hospital. Nathan’s memories of place are hazy, but conversations crisp and clear. This one plays like a movie when Peter pulls it out to look at it.

“You love him more than your family,” says Heidi, her eyes bright and accusing. “It’s unnatural,” she adds, and Peter can feel Nathan recoiling from the truth of that. Heidi seems to see Nathan’s jaw clench—his only tell-tale when someone hits too close to truth.

“He _is_ my family,” says Nathan with deceptive mildness. He’s resigned; he deserves this fight, has been waiting for it since the day they got married.

“You didn’t tell me about any of this. The FBI, Peter’s powers, your powers. Claire.”

“Claire was born before I met you.” His voice goes hard.

“I thought we were partners,” she says. “I knew you didn’t tell me everything, but this . . .”

“How did you find out? Who told you about Claire?” As long as the argument stays about Claire, Nathan can manage it. He has an explanation in his head for Claire, practiced and honed.

“So you can plug the leak? I don’t think so, Nathan. Angela found a school for the boys in Switzerland. I’m taking them there.”

“What does my mother have to do with this? She told you about Claire.” Gears in Nathan’s head turn, trying to figure out her angles while keeping Heidi from walking out the door.

“They’re young,” he says. “Don’t take them away from me.”

“You want an ugly divorce, try and stop me.”

“Heidi,” says Nathan. He puts his hand on her shoulder, and she looks at it as she would a bug, some speck of dirt on her cashmere twin set.

“I’m not going to divorce you, Nathan, not unless you make me. But don’t ask me for any favors.” Heidi tightens her lips over whatever else she might want to say.

“Angela,” says Nathan, unused to his mother’s given name. “She failed with this generation so she’s trying with the younger. You want to let her get her hooks into Simon and Monty? Did she tell you that she wanted to sacrifice Peter and all of New York for me to be President?”

“Peter!” Heidi bites off his name bitterly. “She told me you were willing to sacrifice New York until you realized what it would do to Peter.”

Nathan presses his lips together. He has no reply to that bit of truth.

“Does Peter know that? I love him too, Nathan, but marriage means putting your wife first. Your children. We shouldn’t come second.”

“You don’t,” he says. “You always came first. What would you have done?”

Heidi looks like she might soften for a moment. “Liar,” she whispers. Her eyes are bright with anger and unshed tears. Nathan reaches out to her, and Peter finds the willpower to cut off the memory.

“You could have had everything,” says Mrs. Petrelli, as Peter is sucked into another piece of the past. She’s talking to Nathan. Peter never saw her look so coldly at him, not up until then. Her gloves are on.

Nathan looks back her just as coldly; Peter can feel rather than see the expression he wears. “I would have had nothing.”

“You’ll have nothing anyway, Nathan.”

“Why are you here, Ma? You have Heidi and the kids.”

“There might still be a chance for you, Nathan. It’s not over yet.”

Nathan considers and rejects some recriminations. His mother is always right in her own mind; he can’t recall ever seeing her back down from a mistake. He stands up from his desk chair and crosses the room to her. He puts his hands on her shoulders and kisses her forehead. It’s a tender gesture, Peter can feel that, at odds with the anger he feels.

“It is over.”

 **New York, January 2007.**

Peter went to see Mohinder after finding out about Micah and Nathan’s election. He didn’t know what kind of answer he’d get, or even if he’d ask the question. Maybe Bennet was right—Nathan at least had a good reason to protect people like them—someone else might not.

Mohinder was packing books into boxes when Peter found him. Sunlight filtered in blue-green through the curtains and lit the dusty surfaces. Peter knocked on the door this time, and Mohinder seemed glad to see him.

“Please pardon the mess,” he said. “I don’t know how my father amassed so much junk while he was here.”

“You’re leaving already?”

Mohinder wiped his face off with a towel. “I’m sorting, mostly, and making things ready.”

Peter pulled a plain, but well-made wooden box out of the trash bin and held it in his hands. “You’re getting rid of this?” he asked, when Mohinder let him in.

“It’s expensive to ship things back. I can only take what I must.” Mohinder wiped his forehead off with the back of his arm. Outside was cold, but in Mohinder’s apartment was warm, and he was wearing nothing more than a tank top and a pair of cargo pants.

“So store it here.”

“It’s pointless.” He looked around. “I don’t know when I’ll be back.” _Or if._

“Why are you leaving?”

Mohinder shook his head and smiled. “I saw on the news that your brother is all right. You could have told me.”

“I’m sorry,” said Peter. “I, ah . . . I got distracted. The news didn’t know there was anything wrong with him.”

“They knew he was in the hospital, not why. How did he survive, Peter? Did you find someone?”

Peter looked away. “I healed him.” And then his mother had erased the doctor’s memory—another casualty in the Petrelli wake.

“You absorbed the power from someone?” Mohinder asked.

“Not on your list. Someone I met once . . .” Peter didn’t want to think of that, how Linderman had shaped his life through tools like his brother, his mother. Tools that eventually turned in his hand.

“Who was it?” Mohinder asked. Peter felt that family instinct to silence, cover-up, and almost demurred, but Mohinder was the best advocate they had. He had a right to know. “Linderman. He knew my father. I met him at Nathan’s wedding.”

Mohinder shook his head and smiled to himself. “You are truly extraordinary,” he said. “The offer is still open, you know.” His tone was mocking, not of Peter, but of himself.

“What, you still want to study me?” He glanced down and then back up at Mohinder. There was something under their banter that Peter couldn’t quite get a handle on, even with the mind reading.

“I think it could be most instructive.” A slight smile softened the formal words. Peter shrugged, fighting the flush rushing to his cheeks. Mohinder found him _charming_ , while Peter felt awkward and ungainly.

“What are you going to do in India?”

Mohinder looked at him and turned a book over in his hand. “First edition _Origin of the Species_. I don’t know how much she paid for it. Or whether she stole it.” He handed it to Peter.

“You should keep this.” Peter caught images of _her_ : slim, sylphlike, knowing too well how to make Mohinder like her. “You should forgive her.”

“Her betrayal was minor compared to some,” said Mohinder, his voice went cold. He took the book from Peter’s hands. “Are you going to help them?”

“Who?”

“The ones who want to control you?”

“That’s not what he wants.”

“What who wants? Bennet or your brother?”

“You’re avoiding my question. Why not stay?”

“Between people who want me dead for knowing too much, and people who want to use what I know, I think I’m better off back home.” The words were flip, but Peter saw a flash of real fear in Mohinder’s eyes.

“I . . . I wouldn’t let anyone threaten you.”

Hope lit his eyes, then faded to resignation. “But your brother, or some other politician, would still want to have some kind of say in my research, and I have no grant money here. No, Peter, I’m better off at home. I have a job there I’ve been neglecting too long.” He picks up a small bronze statuette of a many armed elephant. “Ganesha,” he said. “Remover of obstacles. In India every taxi driver has one.”

“Does it help with the traffic?”

Mohinder shrugged and smiled. “Not really.” He wrapped the statuette with tissue paper and placed it in a small box. “You’ve been avoiding my questions too. Many are going to see you as a weapon. Which is the hand that will pull the trigger?”

Uncomfortable questions and more, unspoken underneath. Mohinder’s certain path seemed like a reproach. “When are you going back? Not that I want you gone, I just . . .”

“A few weeks yet.”

 **Washington, D. C., January 2007.**

Nathan took a townhouse in Georgetown. Peter went with him to scope it out, since Heidi was still with their mother and the boys in Switzerland. Nathan’s memories are strange revisions of Peter’s, paring down the ugliness, his arguments with Peter, until the end.

Nathan sees himself in those days flush with success, the sexy young Congressman with charisma to burn. He edited himself with Peter too, wouldn’t talk about Heidi and the kids, barely even thought about them. Peter worried that he wouldn’t be able to hold back whatever sadness that brought indefinitely, but in a way it had been a relief, no Heidi between them anymore.

“What do you think?” said Nathan when they walked through a small but charming stone house on 29th St. Georgetown reminded Peter of some Brooklyn neighborhoods but newer, cleaner. He didn’t feel the weight of history and the restless presence of millions of people here the way he did in New York.

“Kind of small for you,” said Peter. Georgetown seemed to have almost the same housing standards as Manhattan—small, hugely expensive spaces, but Nathan could afford larger than this in New York.

“You’ll like the neighborhood, Pete,” said Nathan, putting his hand on Peter’s shoulder and guiding him behind the realtor toward the bright red stairs. “Lots of young people.”

“And it’s a very gay friendly neighborhood,” the realtor was saying as he walked ahead of them. In the kitchen he took a moment to look Peter up and down.

Nathan’s answering glower almost made Peter burst out laughing, but he swallowed it down and only said “Good to know” while shooting an amused glance at Nathan.

“How long does it take a car to get to the Hill?”

“Depends on traffic.”

“I’ll take it. Send the papers to my New York office, and someone will cut you a check.”

They stayed in a suite in a Marriott near the Hill until the house was ready, spent every night in bed together. Nathan went out late meeting fellow representatives, lobbyists, and slid in next to Peter after he’d fallen asleep. The noise of his thoughts sometimes woke Peter up, the endless involutions of his strategies, the names and faces he catalogued in his impressive memory.

Peter rifles through those names, now, just to see if Nathan has them all still, his meetings at earliest point on the trajectory of his meteoric rise to the White House. They are there, organized as a library card catalogue.

In those early weeks in Washington, when Nathan stayed out late, Peter sometimes blinked up to New York and knocked on Mohinder’s door.

“Pretty soon now, huh?” said Peter, when Mohinder answered the door. The apartment was even more full of boxes, the furniture and decorations gone.

“Yes,” he said. “My flight is on Tuesday night.”

“I could just teleport you there.”

Mohinder smiled at that, and Peter could feel his excitement, the temptation. Then he shook his head. “No, I need to be in the country legally. Can’t have them trying to deport me after I leave, can we?”

“Guess not.”

“How is your brother?”

Peter smiled and didn’t answer. Nathan’s life had taken over his again, now, when Peter should have had the most freedom. He flexed his hands, hands that could heal, could blow up a city, but he still couldn’t truly change things. Even the healing was a strictly one person at a time.

Mohinder didn’t say anything for a moment, then, “If you get tired of standing in his shadow, you should visit me in Chennai. You’d like it there.”

“Would I?”

Mohinder shrugged. “You won’t know unless you try.”

Peter bid Mohinder goodbye after helping carry some boxes down to his cab to take them to the mail box store, using his telekinesis to shield them from the evening’s cold, slicing rain. He leaned in impulsively and kissed Mohinder on the cheek before Mohinder got into the driver’s seat. As his lips brushed Mohinder’s skin, he caught a flash of “Eden” from Mohinder’s mind and an image, more of a sensation really, of a kiss, a goodbye kiss, a last kiss.

“I won’t say ‘goodbye’,” said Mohinder. “I’ll see you later.” _At least you’ll live,_ Peter heard him think.

“You’ll see me again, I promise.”

Mohinder smiled, a smile that tugged at Peter when he remembered it later.

Peter watched the cab leave, and let the rain fall on him again, then shot up into the sky and back to Washington.

***

That was the night that answered Mohinder’s question: which hand would wield Peter as a weapon. Peter digs into Nathan’s memories of how it started; Nathan was waiting for the opportunity to use Peter’s powers, needing a worthy cause, but he never doubted Peter’s loyalty. Peter loved him. Together they would make the Petrelli name mean something more than money and mob ties.

They call it a freshman mixer. There is much about being a freshman congressman that is like being back in college, and the social planning is the worst. The suits are better . . . _well, some of them,_ thinks Nathan, as he looks at the freshman representative from North Dakota shuffle across the room. Most of the men have their wives by their side, but Heidi wouldn’t come.

Nathan walks around the room, striding purposefully even when he doesn’t know who he was walking toward. He flashes his good-to-meetcha smile at everyone—a toned down version of his campaign smile. That one is best for a whole room, seen from a podium, this one, Peter says, is a little more moderate.

“Okay, don't _do_ that,” is what Peter said, the first time Nathan tried out his campaign smile. “You look like you're about to go for my neck.” Then his face flushed bright red, but there had been company around to prevent him from qualifying that statement.

He wishes Peter were here, partially for his powers, and then, because in this brave new world, sometimes thoughts become reality, he feels a light pressure on his shoulder, and a whispered, “I am.”

Peter loses the thread of this memory for a moment as it becomes caught up in his own. He flew from New York to DC, to tire himself out and try to stop thinking of Mohinder, but he hadn’t felt like sleeping when he arrived. He wanted to watch Nathan at work, see what was worth all this secrecy.

He walked through the crowded cocktail party, practicing one of his new powers and fading through people when they brushed up against him. He watched the other freshman Congressmen watching Nathan. They parted instinctively around him, glanced at him whenever they made a point in their conversation, hoping he would hear and comment. Nothing had changed.

“Let’s not beat around the bush, Mr. Petrelli,” said a brash, blustering Congressman from Wyoming. Carson, Peter picked up his name from the group around him. Everett Carson. His face had gone red from drinking, and he tugged at his tie to loosen it. “You’re right in the middle of this stuff.”

Nathan’s dignity was like armor, and he tightened it around him without moving a muscle. “What are you referring to, Congressman Carson?”

“The freaks. We’ve been hearing stories, coming out of Las Vegas, New York.”

Nathan smiled. Peter could see the malice in it, but he didn’t think anyone else would. “New York is a strange place. The _Times_ said that flash was a satellite burning up in the atmosphere.”

“Linderman, your disappearing brother. That criminal in Nevada who the guards swear can walk through walls. The woman who beat up five armed guards without breaking a sweat. I have documents that prove there’s something going on. I intend to get this investigated.”

Nathan clapped him on the arm, although Peter could feel his distaste at having to pretend to be friendly with this man. “That’s a great idea, Mr. Carson. The public has a right to know.”

 _Peter,_ Nathan thought at him, loud enough to startle him, _you have to find out what he has. What he knows._

Peter saw red spots in front of his vision, and it took all the concentration he had to stay invisible. He had to leave through the door instead of going out through the wall. He found a bathroom in the hotel’s lobby and let himself become visible. His hands were glowing slightly, just a tinge around the edges. Spider webs of fire crawled along the edge of the bathroom mirror when he looked at it. He turned on the cold water with a flick of his mind, wet a paper towel and pressed it to his throat and his forehead until he could breathe normally again.

Bennet told him Ted had learned to control it, so he should be able to as well. Not tonight, though. He looked at himself once more in the mirror, the droplets of water dripping off the stubble of his chin, his eyes dark, shadowed with fear.

He took a deep breath and blinked back to the Georgetown house, took a shower, and got into bed.

Nathan woke him with a touch on his shoulder when he came home later and slipped into bed beside him. “Were you there, Peter?”

“Yes.”

“Good, I’m not losing my mind then. What did you find out?”

“Nothing. I—I had to leave. I couldn’t control it again.” Peter fought to keep the fear out of his words, but Nathan felt it anyway and put an arm around Peter, whispered, “Shh,” against his neck.

 _Need_ he felt Nathan think, _only one._ “You’ll learn how to control it. And then you’ll find out what Carson knows.” He kissed down Peter’s neck and reached around between Peter’s legs. “You can do anything.” _Anything for me._

Part of Peter so desperately wanted to say yes, yes, and subsume his will into Nathan’s. Nathan had the answers, the plans, Nathan’s hands on him were all he needed, and helping Nathan was penance and absolution for killing him in the sky above New York. With Nathan’s hands on him, Nathan inside him, Peter didn’t have to think at all.

But he started dreaming again, the old dreams, from before he believed in these powers, before the flying and the healing were real. _Charles Deveaux and Nathan are missing from these dreams, but Mohinder is there, walking the streets with him. A kiss on Peter’s lips and then out into the world. Peter’s feet don’t have to touch the ground but he walks it anyway. As he nears the slum, children come running after him, tugging on fabric of his pants. They want nothing more than Peter can give them. Here he is a hero._

  
 **Nantucket, January 2011.**

Peter lights a fire in the living room fireplace, and they pulls out the couch for them to sleep on. “I’ll take the easy chair,” Nathan volunteers.

“Come on, Nathan.” Peter climbs under the covers and pats the bed next to him. “Nothing ever happened I didn’t want.” He’s said it a few times now, and Nathan seems close to believing that Peter means it.

Peter turns out the overhead light with a thought. The glow from the fire paints the walls orange and casts strange shadows over Nathan’s face. “That’s convenient,” says Nathan. “All those powers . . .”

Peter sits up and faces the fire. He draws his knees up to his chest and rests his arm on them. The fire is warm and contained. It shouldn’t make him think of exploding above Manhattan, of the first time he failed Nathan. “You really believe in them?” he asks.

“Believe in what?” Nathan’s voice has gone soft with exhaustion. Peter can’t tell what he’s thinking now, whether his ambitions have finally been quenched.

“In our powers.”

“I just flew, Peter. Why wouldn’t I?”

“You didn’t when we first got them. You told me not to be ridiculous.”

“What choice do I have? Your powers are going to save us.”

“You can fly.” Peter looks and sees Nathan smile, the first unguarded expression he’s worn since Peter came back.

“Fly, yeah. Pa didn’t want me to fly.”

“What do you remember?” Peter asks.

“The last thing I remember is . . . you. Much younger. Just as stubborn.” Peter sees that image from Nathan’s memory flash through his mind again: Nantucket summer, skin that tastes of salt. Nathan smiles slightly. “It feels like yesterday.”

This is where Peter can reach out, perhaps, make this new Nathan his. Maybe it would help Nathan forgive him, ease that pit of anger still churning Nathan’s stomach. Nathan deserves this.

He remembers a conversation with Mohinder. _You’re a puzzle, Peter Petrelli,_ he said. _Self-effacing and egotistical all at the same time._ Maybe offering his body won’t be enough.

Peter smiles and realizes Nathan is still watching him. “What?”

“Just thinking of something Mo—Dr. Suresh said. About how I think too highly of myself.”

Nathan sighs and starts to turn away, but Peter stops him with a hand on his shoulder. “Nathan, I . . .”

Nathan puts his hand on top of Peter’s, just resting it there for a moment, but then he starts to trace Peter’s fingers, exploring, mapping them. The simple gesture, fingers touching, sends a shiver down Peter’s spine. He licks his lips and parts them.

“What is this, Peter, a last meal?” Nathan pushes Peter’s hand off him. “ What’s your Dr. Suresh going to think when you go back to him?”

 _He won’t know,_ Peter thinks of saying, like a cheating husband, a cheating wife. _He doesn’t have to know._ “He doesn’t know about . . . this.”

 _”She doesn’t need the truth, she needs hope,”_ Peter remembers Nathan saying of Heidi. Peter’s no better now.

“Don’t do me any more favors.” Nathan rolls away from him to sleep.

 **Washington, D.C., April, 2007.**

“I’m not going to TK his golf balls into the holes, Nathan, that’s ridiculous.”

Nathan had grown so used to Peter saying yes that he barely turned from selecting the correct—somewhat garish—slacks for the outing, and pulling his clubs out of his closet. “He’ll be more likely to sign the bill if he has a good game. That’s how these old school guys work.”

“You could just miss a lot.”

“Then he’ll think I’m a chump. You coming?”

“No.”

“You won’t help me with something harmless like this, and you won’t get those files from Carson—what good are you?” Nathan said it flippantly, but Peter glared anyway.

“People need to know that there are others out there. How many scared kids with powers do you think there are, like Claire, wondering what’s going on. Secrecy _kills_ , Nathan.”

Nathan pulled Peter to him, and placed a kiss on his temple. “I know, Peter,” he said. His tone chafed Peter, too conciliatory. “But we need to control how it gets out. Carson isn’t going to be a friend—he’s a Republican from Wyoming. If he controls the story, it will be bad for everyone. Believe me, Pete; I know how this stuff works.”

Peter looked at him and wavered. Nathan did know how this worked, how to pull the strings, move the levers that made the system work. “What do you want me to do, Nathan?”

“First we have to get those files. Find out where Carson got them from. Get some leverage if you can. Read Carson’s mind. Everyone has secrets they don’t want known.” He traced his hand along Peter’s neck, making him shiver. “Find out his.”

Carson’s office safe held the files. Peter brought them back to Nathan when Nathan returned from his golf game. “These are copies,” he said. “Where are the originals?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, find out.”

Carson shared an apartment with another Western congressman, close to the hill. Peter phased through the wall in the middle of the night, while the congressman was sleeping. He reached out his hand and concentrated: gentle pressure on Carson’s neck. Peter looked and saw his hand hanging in the air like Darth Vader’s when he choked someone, and put it down again. Carson still slept.

Peter closed his eyes for a moment and tried again. He had to _want_ it, want Carson choked, air passage closing with terror, trying to breathe and failing. He opened his eyes when he heard a strangled moan and saw Carson sit up, gasping, and rubbing his throat. He looked around the dark room, eyes wide, terrified.

“Where did you get those files?” Peter asked, keeping himself invisible.

“Which files?”

“The Hawkins-Sanders files. Someone gave them to you. Who was it?”

“They came in the mail. I don’t know anything else.”

Peter caught a flash of Nevada postmark from his mind. “Don’t lie to me, Carson.” He could feel the fear building in Carson’s mind.

“You’re one of them. You can walk through walls. People are going to know.”

“You’re not going to tell.”

“You think I’m scared of you?”

“Yes.” Peter choked off Carson’s airway with a thought, long enough to feel the fear build, long enough to feel unconsciousness starting to encroach on Carson’s vision, then let him go again.

“I’m going to need all the copies you made. You don’t have to say anything, just think it.” Carson’s mind provided a few other congressmen’s names with whom he’d shared them, a safety deposit box in a bank in Jackson Hole that held the originals.

“Thank you, congressman,” said Peter. “One more thing. No man gets to a position like yours without doing something he’s ashamed of. What did you do?”

 _A seedy motel. A pregnant stripper threatening to go to his wife. A backhand across the mouth, and she simply laughs. So he hits her again. And again and again and again, until her face is unrecognizable, until the laughter turns to screams and then the screams turn to silence._

“You should be in jail.” He flicked Carson off his bed and into the wall. His pain and fear bloomed up quickly; his thoughts narrowed to a plea that Peter won’t do that again. Peter moved his hand slightly and watched Carson’s eyes widen again, his shoulders came up in an instinctive cringe.

“Please, I’ll pay.”

“I don’t want your money. I want information.”

“You have it, everything I know.”

“Who else knows about your dead girlfriend?”

“They never found the body. No one.”

“I could make you turn yourself in. That’s what I should do.”

“Please, no.” Carson cowered back from him again, and Peter suddenly felt as disgusted with himself as he was with Carson.

Nathan still awake when Peter returned, sitting in his study with one lamp on, going over some papers. He looked up when Peter appeared. “Did you find out anything?”

“Yes,” said Peter. “I made him tell me.” Peter wiped his hands off on his jeans, as if he could rid himself of the taint of what Carson had told him, what he’d done to get that information. He’d _enjoyed_ making Carson tell him that.

He told Nathan the names of the other congressmen. “And he murdered a stripper. Hid the body. Nathan, we should turn him in. That’s not just illegal campaign contributions. He deserves to be in prison.

“We’re supposed to be helping, Nathan, and people like that are running around free. At least I know now. I could make him confess. He was scared of me.” Peter stalked over to the window, flexing his hands. He couldn’t let go of that feeling, _power, seductive and tantalizing_.

He looked down at the sidewalk. The streets were completely empty, as streets in New York never were. Nathan walked over and stood behind him, massaging his shoulders until Peter stopped resisting, and relaxed back against him.

“Not yet, Pete.” Nathan’s lips almost brushed Peter’s ear. “We might need more information from him. Find out what the other congressmen know, and then we’ll decide.”

Peter collected the files from the other congressmen, along with secrets that he gave Nathan, and documentation of those secrets—taped conversations, illegal campaign contributions, dalliances with interns, unacknowledged and illegitimate children, and Nathan locked them away in his desk, kept their secrets in his pocket and pulled them out when he needed a bill passed.

Editorials called him a “uniter” because anything he supported he could guarantee to draw support for from both sides of the aisle. Much more experienced congressmen started courting his vote, and the DNC started using his face on fundraising letters.

After he’d amassed enough power, he let Peter go after Carson. Peter found witnesses in Wyoming, the location of the body. A paternity test proved everything, and Carson went to jail, but Nathan held Peter back from the rest. “I can do more good if I use them, Peter,” he said, and Peter grudgingly agreed.  



	5. Chapter 5

**Denver, Colorado, August 2008.**

Peter didn’t like to look back on those months, how he trailed along in Nathan’s wake again, being used. They still fought, more and more each time Nathan asked Peter to do something. He got a job in one of the local hospitals and healed all of his patients, until one of the doctors noted that he was the common thread in a series of miracle cures, and Nathan asked him to stop.

There was an uneasy mood in the country, a feeling of something about to break loose. Peter felt it when he walked among the tourists on the Mall; they looked at the sky too much, expecting something, a blow from the gods perhaps.

Through their machinations, Nathan was asked to be the keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. After a speech that pundits compared with Barack Obama’s in 2004, Nathan was closeted with the presumptive nominee for several hours.

“The VP nominee has brain cancer,” said Nathan, when he found Peter in their suite late that night. “They want me to step in.”

“Isn’t that what what-his-name, Nield, the congressman who dropped out so you got to run had?”

“No, that was skin cancer.”

“Did you ever wonder if Linderman did that? This power can work both ways.”

“Linderman is dead.”

“Still.”

“You’re awfully paranoid, Pete. I thought that was my job.”

“You’re not even going to try to find out how this happened? Claire—Claire’s mother got brain cancer because of the Haitian. We should make sure this isn’t the same thing.”

“Why does it matter, Pete?”

“Because it’s wrong.” He ran his hand through his hair and jerked his shoulder out of Nathan’s grasp. “You’re just turning a blind eye to this, to Linderman fixing your election. You’re _benefiting_ from someone else doing these things—it’s as bad as doing it yourself.”

“How am I supposed to find out of some mysterious _Haitian_ gave Andrews brain cancer. Are you going to do it? Clark Kent your way into that story? Your powers don’t work around him.”

“So you’re just going to take the nomination?”

“Why shouldn’t I, Pete? They want me, not another congressman, another senator. Me.”

“It’s wrong, Nathan. How are you going to fix the world if you just let things like this slide? The election fraud—you shouldn’t even be here.”

“What else was I supposed to do?”

“Stand up for something, Nathan. Help me.”

“I did help you.” _Saved New York and the voters don’t even_ know _about it._ Peter cut off listening to Nathan’s thoughts in disgust.

“You’re just going to take a tragedy and turn it for your own . . . this is just like New York. You were going to—”

“But I didn’t.”

“You do that one thing; that’s it. You never have to do the right thing again. You think I’ll just keep on helping you.”

“I need . . . political capital to help people, Peter. This is the right thing.” Peter started to soften, again. Nathan had always been like this. Who was Peter to change him? He could do some investigation on the side. “Anyway,” Nathan continued, “what are you doing that’s so much better?”

All thought of compromise— _capitulation_ —faded. “What? I’m trying to help you.”

Nathan pushed his hands through his hair. “Right now you’re just getting in my way.”

“Fine, I’ll get out of your way.” Peter crossed to the door, registering the mild surprise on Nathan’s face. This wasn’t quite how this fight usually ended. He slammed the door behind him, hard enough to make the maid knocking on doors for turn down service look up and shake her head before continuing her rounds.

Peter flew outside into the cool Denver night before he even thought about the luggage he’d left in Nathan’s room. He didn’t want to go back so Nathan could write apology and reconciliation across Peter’s skin—even invisible, Nathan always knew he was there.

They’d fought before, similar words exchanged and always forgiven but now . . . now Nathan was willing to benefit from an illness that smacked of the Haitian’s meddling, their mother’s meddling, and he’d do nothing about it. He turned a blind eye to this, and how many other things? At least Carson deserved what happened to him, but now an innocent man had cancer, and Nathan didn’t care enough to make sure it was legitimate as long as the disease _helped_ him.

 _“What would you do with Candace’s power,” he remembered Bennet asking. “Would you appear as your brother and renounce your seat?”_ He could. He could go back to the convention center and call a press conference as Nathan, admit everything: the fraud, the vote extortion, the break-ins and strong-arming.

No, he couldn’t put their family through that. _You just don’t want to admit your part in it,_ his conscience insisted in Bennet’s voice.

 _“There’s nothing more dangerous than misguided idealism.”_. At least Nathan would keep Claire and the others safe.

And Peter could walk away. He blinked to the Gramercy Park house. It was late, and New York was still sticky-steamy in the August heat. No one was home. Their mother was also at the convention, watching Nathan take that next step up the ladder. Peter could leave in peace.

  
 **Nantucket, January 2011.**

Nathan is already awake when Peter wakes up, and Peter can hear his thoughts from where he sits on the porch, bundled in flannel blankets, drinking a rapidly cooling cup of tea. If Peter stays still with this early-morning lassitude, he can feel every thought, everything Nathan does.

Nathan’s mind is serene, for him, free of the constant calculations Peter is used to hearing from him, back when he juggled a hundred responsibilities, competing loyalties. Now there is only this: Peter and a past he can’t remember.

The air is a little less harsh today, but by no means warm. Nathan rubs his hand along his chin. He hasn’t shaved in a few days; by the end of the week he’ll have a beard, a disguise if he wants it. _By the end of the week, Peter will be gone,_ thinks Nathan.

Nathan thinks of Heidi, a face he’s seen only in pictures. Peter told him enough to know he wouldn’t be welcome with her, and he has no urge to seek out his mother, who from the day Peter was born saw Nathan as nothing more than a means to an end.

He has the memory of being accepted to law school, officer training, Princeton, and high school. He can fly.

 _Without Peter, I don’t exist._ It’s a strange thought for him. Peter hears him turn it over in his mind; Nathan’s always been the center of things.

Peter gets up, pours himself a cup of tea, and joins Nathan outside. “You exist,” he says. He puts his hand on Nathan’s mug and warms it up for him.

“Mind reading,” says Nathan.

Nathan’s mind feels blank and cold. “Do you hate me, Nathan?” Peter asks.

“Do you want me to?”

“Hate me, love me. Just . . .” Peter doesn’t know how to finish that.

“I’m what you made me, Peter.”

  
 **Washington D.C., to Chennai, India, August 2008.**

There are more memories Peter can access: Nathan trying to get Heidi back once Peter was no longer his, but Peter skims over them. Leaving Nathan had been the right move. And coming back . . . ?

He told himself he wasn’t running _away_ to India. He had credit cards backed by a hundred years of Petrelli men making deals, accruing wealth, and he planned to use them. He sent an email to Nathan: _Going traveling.. Don’t come looking for me._ Assuming he even would. He wanted to add something like “Best of luck” or something else to soften the message, but left it terse and unrevealing.

Mohinder renewed his invitation for Peter to visit him in Chennai when Peter called. Peter remembered the last time they spoke; Mohinder had invited Peter then too. He wanted the opportunity to study Peter, yes, but Peter heard in his thoughts a sort of kinship; they both saw the hope his powers brought, not the danger and pain that Nathan and his mother saw.

Peter packed up a few things he thought he’d want from his Lower East Side apartment: CDs in case he couldn’t charge his iPod in Chennai, some books, some light clothes, khakis and t-shirts.

Peter took a plane to India rather than flying himself or teleporting. He wanted to feel the distance grow between himself and Nathan slowly rather than all at once, and the plane tickets would show up on the credit card bill that was sent to Nathan. _I’m not running,_ Peter wanted Nathan to understand when he saw, _I’m leaving_.

Flying first class was pleasant anyway. He slept and read guidebooks, opted for the curry dinner option rather than the American, to begin to acclimate himself, and watched the succession of Bollywood movies they showed. He fell asleep watching the in-flight map take them over the Ural Mountains, and woke up when the plane landed in Delhi.

As soon as the cabin doors opened, Peter could smell that he was in a far-off country. Even the air was different here: a mixture of smoke and spices, and some indefinable foreignness. Yes, this was the distance he’d wanted. He took a car to the domestic airport and then took another flight across the continent to Chennai.

It was almost midnight when that flight landed, but Mohinder was there to meet him in the airport. He gave Peter a hug as his driver took Peter’s bags. Mohinder looked happy and neat, clad in cream-colored trousers and a light tan tunic. Peter felt sweaty and rumpled after his long flight. The driver led them out through the airport into the hot smoky night to his car.

On the way to Mohinder’s house, they passed road-side snack bars, _dhabas_ , where multi-colored trucks pulled up so the drivers could have a late snack before pressing on. Peter saw the backs of people eating at the _dhabas_ pressed close next to each other as they raised their fingers to their mouths. _Crowded_ , he thought, _but no worse than New York at rush hour._

Mohinder’s mother had stayed up to greet him. She was a short woman with intelligent young-old eyes, and she wore a lavender sari rather than the trousers and tunics, the _salwar kameez_ that Peter had seen on most of the women in the airport. She patted Peter’s face and said in a slightly stronger accent than Mohinder’s, “I’m so glad you’re here safely.” She had put on a pot of chai and she pressed some on Peter before showing him up to the guest room.

Peter woke up at four in the morning when his body would sleep no more, and went into the bathroom to splash some water on his face. He lay in bed for a while trying to sleep, but then decided to walk out through the wall and fly over the sleeping Chennai.

He flew over the rivers, and an industrial center with tall buildings. Along the railroad tracks were a few slums where people lived under tarps with dirt floors and took their morning crap out over the railroad tracks. Peter returned to the house covered with dust from the air, and smelling of the spicy smoke from cook fires. He took a shower before anyone in the house could smell him.

Mohinder didn’t have any classes to teach until the afternoon, so he took Peter on an early morning walk through the streets around his home. Even now the air was hot and the roads already choked with traffic on foot, bike, auto-rickshaws and a few cars, traffic which grew heavier as the morning wore on.

They stopped at a chai stand where Mohinder ordered something for them in Tamil. Peter smiled to hear the unintelligible syllables rolling from Mohinder’s mouth. He thought he’d get along fine in India, reading people’s thoughts to know what they meant, but most of them thought in the language they spoke, and digging deeper for the meaning behind the words took time, and knowing the person. When Peter concentrated he could just make out the suggestion of _hot_ and _comforting_ under the words Mohinder spoke.

“Isn’t it a little hot to drink tea?” Peter asked.

“My mother says that you feel cooler after drinking something hot because you sweat.”

“I don’t buy it,” said Peter.

“Me neither,” said Mohinder with a smile. “But the chai is good here, and the day isn’t getting any cooler.”

They sat on short tin stools under an awning, resting elbows on knees. “Is it safe to drink?” Peter asked.

“Safe enough,” said Mohinder. “Everything is boiled.”

“I don’t know if I can get an intestinal parasite anymore anyway,” said Peter. The proprietor brought them chai in battered metal cups, and Mohinder counted out a few coins to him from a folded leather change purse with gold-embossed leaves on the cover.

Peter started to get out his wallet—Armani, black and anonymous next to Mohinder’s—but Mohinder waved him off. “You probably don’t have change small enough yet,” he said. “This costs less than an American quarter.”

“You like it here,” said Peter, hearing the protective pride in Mohinder’s voice.

“It’s my country,” said Mohinder. He wrapped his hands around his cup and raised it to his lips. His lower lip dipped in a pleasant, inviting curve as he took a sip of the chai.

In the afternoon Mohinder pointed Peter to the local museums and shops so Peter could keep himself occupied during Mohinder’s classes. Peter found an old bookseller on Mahatma Gandhi Road who told him about when none of the high-tech industry had been there, when you could hear the bells from the mosques ringing out five times a day over the city. Now the traffic drowned them out.

Mrs. Suresh cooked them dinner that night, vegetarian fare that she and Mohinder ate gracefully with their hands, although she provided Peter with flatware. After hearing Mrs. Suresh’s disapproving thought when Peter picked up a piece of _dosa_ with his left hand, he noticed how Mohinder and his mother both kept their left hands tucked in their laps when they ate and did the same.

After dinner she shooed Mohinder and Peter out to have a drink on the screened-in balcony, while she cleaned up.

“Why did you come here, Peter?” Mohinder asked.

Peter could hear something under his words, some thoughts Mohinder couldn’t even shape into words in his mind, embarrassment, longing, some need. Mohinder missed New York, or at least what it represented: change and adventure, finally taking his part in his father’s ambitions.

“Not that I mind,” Mohinder added, cutting through Peter’s thoughts. “Quite the contrary.”

Peter inhaled the humid, fragrant air. He’d grown more used to it since he landed but could still taste it in the back of his throat when he inhaled deeply. The porch had an overhead fan that stirred the air and dried the sweat as it bloomed on Peter’s neck.

“Nathan.” He didn’t say anything else for a while, just turned the tiny glass of scotch in his hand, still hating the taste, still tasting Nathan in every sip.

“We fought,” he said, when he heard Mohinder move, about to say something to steer the conversation onto safer ground. “He’s going to be Vice President.”

“He might lose,” said Mohinder, raising his eyebrows slightly. There was an amused set to his mouth that made Peter smile in answer.

“He’ll win. He saved me, he saved New York. But he hasn’t changed.”

Peter could feel Mohinder’s confusion, but he didn’t want to clarify, didn’t want to speak the words out loud that would force him to admit that Claire had been as right about Nathan as Peter had. Saving New York hadn’t been a fluke; Peter clung to that belief, but without another huge catastrophe and Peter in the middle of it, would Nathan ever take a chance like that again?

Peter drained the scotch and stretched his arms above his head, yawning huge and unfeigned. “Jet lag.”

“It takes a couple days to get over it.”

Peter stood, and Mohinder looked up at him, some understanding deeper than words, or even the thoughts that Peter could pick from his brain, shone in his eyes. Peter felt _home_ in a way he hadn’t since his last trip to Nantucket with Nathan. “I’ll see you in the morning,” said Peter, just so he could stay for another breath under Mohinder’s gaze.

“Yes, you will.”

***

“Are you showing your friend the sights, Mohinder?” Mrs. Suresh asked at dinner a few nights later.

“He’s being a wonderful tour guide, Mrs. Suresh,” said Peter, before Mohinder could say anything. He and Mohinder exchanged a smile.

“I don’t know if my contract will be renewed for the next year,” said Mohinder, when they sat out on the porch again that night. “What are you going to do here?”

“Don’t worry,” said Peter. “I won’t overstay my welcome. I’m going to see the country, I guess. I’ve never been further than Europe. I used to want to but my family—now I can probably keep myself safe.” He looked down the glass of chai in his hands. “What are you going to do if it’s not renewed?”

Mohinder ran his hands through his hair. He seemed more at ease here than in New York; Peter liked seeing him make these relaxed gestures. “Truthfully, I don’t know if I will go back even if it is renewed. It will be under the condition that I don’t discuss my father’s theories again this year. My theories . . . his only went so far.”

“But you have proof now.” He glanced at Mohinder. “I’m here.”

Mohinder chuckled. “A single data point. I can’t hang a whole theory of genetic migration on you.” His voice grew sharper. “I can’t do much of anything as a professor with no research grants.”

“Then why are you here?”

Mohinder spread his hands. “Waiting, I suppose. For inspiration, for a sign. What I should do next. My father ran headlong into danger, and then so did I. But this is too important for just one person’s mind. I need a whole new framework.”

Peter had the feeling Mohinder was hardly talking to him anymore, but he made a noncommittal noise and Mohinder continued. “I should take up my cousin Rahul on his offer. He’s a statistician at a biotech company in Bangalore.”

“What offer?” Peter asked.

“Lab space. They’ll rent it to me if I can get a grant.” He exhaled loudly. “And that will be based on political influence more than science, and I don’t have that.” He looked at Peter and gave him a warm smile that made Peter smile back in answer. “This is your vacation, I’m sorry to burden you with my troubles.”

“I don’t mind,” said Peter. “It’s not really a vacation anyway, more of a leave of absence.”

“A leave of absence from what?”

“My life,” said Peter. “Nathan’s life. I don’t know,” said Peter. “It’s like . . . I can do all these things, but I still don’t know how to make a difference.”

“Ah,” said Mohinder.

“Ah? That’s all you’ve got?” He smiled at Mohinder, who smiled back, shaking his head.

“Just because I’m Indian doesn’t mean I’m wise,” said Mohinder with that lovely curve of a smile that told Peter he was being made fun of. “There are wise men here, though. Maybe you will find the answers you’re looking for.”

  
 **Nantucket, January 2011.**

“Why didn’t you just ask me to leave?” Nathan asks after Peter coaxes him inside again. “If the stakes were high enough maybe I would have let this other person take over?”

“Would you, Nathan? Right now you want to find a reporter to reveal yourself to. Someone else wearing your face—you can barely stand it now.” At least for this Nathan, the taste of power is no longer fresh.

“I would do what was best.”

“I wasn’t willing to bet your life on that. They said they’d kill you.”

Nathan pulled a bowl out of the cabinet, poured himself some Cheerios and sat down. He took a bite then made a face. “They’re stale.”

“I don’t know if anyone’s been here in a while. Maybe you came here . . . I don’t know, you probably went to Camp David or something.” Nathan shrugs and takes another bite. “Nathan, we need to talk.”

Nathan rolls his eyes, as Peter expects him to, but he presses on. “I have contacts. I can set you up however you want, a new life. You just have to tell me.”

“What about you?”

Peter shrugs and gives Nathan a conciliatory half-smile. “I . . . I left, Nathan. I told you.”

“You came back. I need you, Peter.” He looks right at Peter. “I don’t know who I am without you.”

Peter startles at the familiar words, truer now than they were when Nathan first spoke them. And then he was willing to die for Peter, or for Peter’s soul. He wonders if Bennet has already contacted Mohinder. He can’t imagine Bennet won’t want Mohinder on their side, taking up the cause of Claire, of Micah, of all the others. Peter isn’t even sure he wants to be there to stand in their way. Maybe they will make the world a better place.

They’ll throw money at Mohinder’s research, and Peter will have to stand by and watch; Mohinder’s star rising over Nathan’s fall.

 _What if Nathan goes back and promises to do everything they ask? He and Mohinder could work together._ But no, without his memories, Nathan is unable to help them and with them he was unwilling . . . it’s the same dilemma, no solving it now.

Nathan is still looking at him, waiting for an answer. Peter takes a deep breath and lays his hand over Nathan’s. “I won’t leave you again,” he promises.

  
 **Chennai, August 2008.**

Peter left Mohinder’s house every day in the early morning, when the purple of night was still fading from the sky. He wanted to see the things that Mohinder wouldn’t show him, to flirt with the feeling of being truly alone in this strange country.

The slums that lined the railroad tracks drew him back day after day. The bright blue of the tarps, the loud colors of the women’s dresses made it more cheerful than Peter expected. He wondered why the government didn’t kick these people out and move them on, like Giuliani had done to New York’s bums, until Mohinder told them some of the slums were government sanctioned, a nod to sanitation granted in the form of a water-pipe running between the tents.

For many mornings he simply flew overhead, watching the lines forming before the water pipe was turned on, watching the women wake up first and boil water for tea over their beat-up tin cook stoves, watching the men wake up later, those without jobs wandering aimlessly, wearing stained white _lungis_ —all from above, invisible, untouchable.

One morning he went lower, put his feet on the ground. The smell of unwashed bodies assailed him. The stream that wet his invisible foot had pieces of excrement floating in its sluggish, brown water. None of his powers could clean it off him, or block the smell from his nostrils. He concentrated on the more familiar scent of the cook fires that pervaded this slum as it did all of Chennai. The scent was even stronger here, and Peter tried not to think of what they burnt. When he flew out into the countryside, he saw cow flops drying on blankets on the sides of the road so they could be used for fuel. It smelled like they burned something even worse than that here.

Small children ran by him, chasing a dirty little puppy, and almost ran into Peter’s invisible legs. They splashed through the stream, and it spattered their legs a lighter brown than their skin. Peter watched them run off, dodging between tents after the puppy. He heard a yell of annoyance and a clatter; they must have run through someone’s breakfast. The thought made him smile.

Then a tide of pain washed over him, someone else’s, of course. The pain scratched sharp nails along his senses until he identified where it was coming from.

A low moan came from a nearby tent. Layers of tarp and once-patterned cloth, now faded to a mottled tan, served as the door. Peter walked through the entrance way invisible, intangible. When he used both those powers at once he wondered sometimes if he could cease to exist entirely, if an errant breeze might blow away the scrap of identity that remained.

There was no breeze inside the tent, only hot, close air that stank of decay. A woman lay on a pallet, dark eyes reddened with pain. A sore on her lip gleamed wetly, angry red edges crinkled with dried fluids. Reaching out with the strange sense Linderman’s power had given him, Peter felt the parasites churning in her gut, the broken bone in her foot that never healed right, and the thing that would kill her: a lung infection slowly filling her chest with pus, drowning her.

Peter reached out, invisible, and healed her: sore, infection, parasites, foot. It wasn’t quite like his dream—that had him out under the open sky—but this felt right somehow, as right as traveling to Odessa and saving Claire had.

He heard her cough once, and felt the pain ease, retreating slower than the disease that caused it, the cells’ memories of pain echoing after the cause fled. She sat up and reached for an earthenware cup by her side and took a sip. The water was warm, almost hot, and had the same flavor as the air: smoky, polluted with human waste, but to the woman it tasted wonderful, her first drink without pain in longer than her fevered brain could remember.

A hint of a smile stretched her lips, hesitant, a smile too often constrained by pain. She reached up to touch her mouth, unblemished now. Peter settled deeper into her consciousness and watched as she thought of her child, left in the care of his grandmother while her body decided to live or die. She put her hand to her chest, feeling the pain of longing, a mother for her child, and Peter, caught in her thoughts and emotions, found himself echoing the movement.

Peter wrenched himself free from the tide of her relief and lost control, turning visible again. The woman screamed with her newly healed lungs, first wordless, and then in Tamil. Peter couldn’t understand, but he knew enough to get out. He closed his eyes long enough to find the concentration to turn invisible again—and blinked himself back to his room in Mohinder’s house.

He sat in the guest room shaking. It was like his dream, but not. In his dream people were grateful. They wanted Peter’s help, and now . . . ? The woman would be glad to be healed, Peter supposed, but he’d gone about it all wrong.

“I went to the slums this morning,” Peter told Mohinder over morning tea and the cornmeal _idlis_ that his mother made for breakfast. She was in the kitchen, and Peter spoke low; he was sure Mohinder’s mother wouldn’t approve of his morning outings, and the germs he might track into the house after being there. “I healed someone.”

Mohinder didn’t say anything, and Peter couldn’t hear anything in his silence.

“What am I supposed to do? All this . . .” He spread his hands. “And I still don’t know. Do I save the world one person at a time?”

Mohinder bit into his _idli_ and licked up the bit of jam that oozed off the edge and onto his lip. “It’s a good start,” he said after he was finished chewing.

“What’s the next step then? If that’s the start?”

“More than one person, I suppose?”

“That’s what Nathan said. He says . . .” _You can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs, Pete._ A pat on Peter’s shoulder, the memory so close to the surface that Peter could almost _see_ Nathan standing behind Mohinder’s chair. Nathan’s eyes were narrow; the mind behind them never had one reason for doing something when it could have twenty.

“It’s for the greater good,” Nathan had said. His hand grew more forceful on Peter’s shoulder, an extension of Nathan’s will, no easier to resist after Peter gained his powers than it had been when he was a nurse. Peter shied away from remembering what he’d done after: reading Congressmen’s minds, making threats to get Nathan support for an important piece of legislation. Nathan thanked Peter for it later, with hands and lips and murmured endearments. Peter couldn’t remember what the bill had been now, if he even knew then.

“What does he say?” Mohinder asked.

Peter flushed; Mohinder had been watching him as those memories played in his mind. “It’s not important.”

***

Peter sat in on a few of Mohinder’s classes. He watched Mohinder’s animation, the way he paid attention to his students, made sure they understood the material while still conveying the passion he felt for it.

“You’re a good teacher,” he told Mohinder after the other students filed out.

“Just trying to make a good impression on you.” Mohinder looked at Peter a moment too long, but Peter couldn’t catch the accompanying thought.

“No, it’s more than that. You care about this stuff. You make it interesting.”

“It’s not enough.” Mohinder gathered his papers together and place them in his bag.

“I know,” said Peter.

They walked through the streets of Chennai back to Mohinder’s mother’s house. Most of the other professors took cars to and from the university, but Mohinder said he liked to walk. He dodged instinctively around children playing in the streets, through the crowds.

“If you think this is crowded, wait until you see Delhi. Or Calcutta.”

“It’s not worse than New York.” But it was a different kind of crowded—here people’s lives spilled out onto the streets, and Peter found himself wanting to turn invisible just to escape the stares he got for the color of his skin.

“Just you wait.”

“Speaking of . . .,” said Peter. “I think it’s time for me to, you know, move on. See the rest of the country.”

“Tired of Madras already?”

Peter shrugged. “You and your mother have been very kind. I don’t want to be a burden.”

Mohinder scattered a few coins in the pot of a beggar lying on their stoop. “He’s been here since I was a boy,” he explained. “The winter break is coming in a few days, Peter. I could show you around if you like.”

Peter hadn’t been looking forward to leaving Mohinder’s company, to seeing the country as a stranger, alone. “I’d like that,” he said.

“We’ll take the train,” said Mohinder, putting a hand on Peter’s arm, cementing the decision with a touch, like Nathan would have. “Then you can really see the countryside.”

***

They bought tickets on a sleeper car that went from Madras to Calcutta, where they stayed with Mohinder’s aunt for a few days. During they trip they slept and read, and drank innumerable cups of tea. Peter took one look at the floor-level toilet with fluids sloshing around it, and decided he could better take care of matters out in one of the fields behind a tree, and fly back to the train when he was done.

Peter watched the country go by out the windows, and sometimes climbed out the door to go flying high above. From above he could see the patchworks of farms, the bright yellow fields of mustard. The air was hazy with pollution around the cities, but out in the country the air tasted fresh and clean.

On their second morning, Peter turned invisible and followed a child’s funeral procession through a small village. Her family was clad in white saris and _kurtas_ , and he watched as her father lit the bier that held her body on fire. Peter cried for whoever she had been, her life cut off too short.

“I wish I could go with you,” said Mohinder after Peter got back from one of his trips. He said it matter-of-factly, so Peter didn’t have to feel guilty, but Peter did anyway, not for the flying Mohinder missed but for his dedication to a cause he could never truly share.

Peter sat down next to him on the lower bunk, ducking his head so it wouldn’t hit the upper. “I wish you could too.” He leaned his shoulder into Mohinder’s for a moment of comfort, and then said lightly. “But I don’t think it wouldn’t be very comfortable for you; I’d have to put you over my shoulders, and I can’t fly for too long that way.”

They stayed with Mohinder’s aunt in Calcutta. Her home was humbler than Mohinder’s in Chennai, and filled with Mohinder’s cousins. They praised Peter’s manners, how he remembered to slip his shoes off at the door, his instinct for keeping the right distance. Bereft of language, Peter had learned to listen for the emotions underneath his hosts’ thoughts.

Calcutta was much more crowded than Chennai, the beggars more importunate, the pollution thicker. He and Mohinder went out in the cool mornings to see the sights. Peter could feel Mohinder relax as they stepped over the threshold of his aunt’s house, away from their prodding fingers and their questions. On this morning they managed to leave the house without a nephew tagging along, or a promise to return with toilet paper, cashews, razors, something.

“Does your mother really have a girl picked out for you?” Peter asked as they walked up to the main street to hire an auto-rickshaw. A man passed them hauling a wheelbarrow stacked high with bales of cotton.

“Probably,” said Mohinder. “It’s her job, after all. And if she doesn’t I’m sure my aunt has ten.” Peter smiled at him, and the annoyance faded slightly from Mohinder’s face. “They think I’m too flighty. That I’ll go back to New York and marry a _gora._ ”

“Your aunt told me about a nice girl in Queens. For you, of course.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” said Mohinder sarcastically. “I’m sure they’ve left no continent unturned.”

As they turned the corner onto the busier main street, an auto-rickshaw dodged around a fallen bicycle and onto the sidewalk. Peter saw it a split second before Mohinder. He grabbed Mohinder around the waist and teleported them back twenty feet as the auto-rickshaw careened ahead of them, knocking over a fruit cart, sending melons flying into the air.

“What . . . who . . . ?” Mohinder struggled in Peter’s grasp and Peter realized he was still hanging on.

“Sorry,” he said. “There was an accident. I was just getting us out of the way.”

Mohinder’s back was pressed up against him, and Peter deliberately didn’t read his thoughts, just enjoyed the physical closeness for a moment longer than was necessary before letting Mohinder go. Mohinder looked up then and saw the mess of the crashed rickshaw, the melons split and smashed in pieces on the sidewalk. “Those could have been our heads,” he said. He turned to face Peter, still closer than anyone should stand to him, _except Nathan_. “Well, not yours,” Mohinder amended.

“It’s still wouldn’t have been fun. You okay?”

“Yes. Thank you for saving me again, Peter.”

“At least I did a better job this time” He smiled, embarrassed. Mohinder was still staring at him, eyes wide.

That night at dinner Peter started talking about continuing their travels, how he wanted to see the Taj Mahal. Mohinder nodded gratefully, and the next day they took their leave.

Another train carried them across the deserts of Rajasthan to Delhi. The desert was dusted with light green plants that crept out of the sand during the rainy season. Mohinder said the monsoon would let up soon, and it would be dry and sere again.

They stayed in one of Delhi’s midrange hotels. Mohinder didn’t have any family here, and Peter was happy to be away from the press of his relatives with their mouths and minds full of questions. Peter scribbled off a postcard to Nathan, and Mohinder helped him buy stamps and the glue to fix them to the card.

They hired a car for the day and let the driver take them to see Delhi’s sights, the fantastical architecture of the Mughal Empire: the Qutab Minar, Humyan’s Tomb, and the Red Fort.

They went to the Fort last. The late afternoon sun made the red stone walls glow and dried the rain from the streets. They paid the higher price for tourists, and walked through the archway into the fort. Peter saw boys, young men on the cusp of adulthood, thin dustings of hair shadowing their upper lips, walking together, fingers intertwined. They lay their heads on each other’s shoulders when they sat against the walls and waited, waited for a bus, for night to fall, for things Peter couldn’t even guess.

“It’s not what you think,” said Mohinder, watching Peter’s eyes follow the couples.

“Oh, you’re reading my mind now?” asked Peter, but smiled to soften the words.

“No, I only mean that here it is normal for men to touch more. It doesn’t mean that they’re necessarily . . .” He pushed his lips out in what Peter would have called a pout on someone else. On Mohinder he didn’t know what to call it. “Lovers.”

Peter raised an eyebrow. “Necessarily?”

“Well, it does happen, but not all these young men are . . .”

“It looks comforting,” said Peter, trying to allay Mohinder’s embarrassment. He remembered being much younger and resting his head on Nathan’s lap when they watched TV. No amount of touching was ever enough; Nathan always went away again, and his absence made the days seem dim until his return. Peter turned to face Mohinder instead of looking out of the battlements at the courtyard below. Mohinder had his own charisma, less bright than Nathan’s but far warmer.

Peter caught Mohinder’s thought just then, not even words, just a lingering image of Peter’s face, the curve of his neck. It was always odd to see himself through other people’s eyes, rose-tinged with affection or eroticism. Mohinder seemed to like his lower lip, and Peter licked it self-consciously. He’d been thinking of making motions in that direction, turning that dream kiss into reality, but he hadn’t quite decided whether to follow through.

Mohinder was his host here, the only person he knew in the whole country; it might be better to keep their relationship to friendship. Then Mohinder walked behind him, and Peter felt the heat from his body as he passed. He remembered the smooth muscles of Mohinder’s stomach, exposed when he slept on the train, the black line of hair from his bellybutton leading down, and thought it might be too late already.

“You can read my mind,” said Mohinder, later when they walked around the perimeter of the fort, within the walls. “You know what I’ve been thinking.” He jutted his chin up proudly. The sun was setting over Delhi, red in the polluted haze. Peter had never seen more beautiful sunsets than here, where the air had so many particles he could taste them, could feel the grit in his eyes.

“I can,” said Peter. “That doesn’t mean I was.”

“It doesn’t?” Mohinder asked. He stopped and looked at Peter. Peter smiled and glanced down, knowing the answer Mohinder wanted. Mind-reading was an unfair advantage, but having felt always at a disadvantage with Nathan before, he didn’t mind holding more of the cards now. Anyway, this was the fun part, bridging that gulf between the moment he knew what would happen and the moment when it finally did.

“You’re hopeless,” said Mohinder with a smile, doing his own trick of, if not mind-reading, reading Peter well enough it made no difference. He put out his hand to Peter and Peter took it, fitting their fingers together, one between the next. “Comforting?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.

Peter slid his fingers against Mohinder’s and rubbed his thumb along the back of Mohinder’s hand. “Something like that,” he agreed. They separated their hands before finishing the walk around the perimeter, but Peter continued to steal looks at Mohinder, and found them returned. Mohinder walked close enough so their arms and the backs of their hands brushed against each other.

Their driver was waiting at the entrance when they left the fort. Beggars and men selling auto-rickshaw rides and postcards came up to them, chattering in English, Hindi, and other languages Peter couldn’t identify. Mohinder held up a hand to wave them off. The driver spat out a stream of red _paan_ juice when he saw them.

“Would you like to see the National Monument or go back to the hotel?” asked Mohinder as they pulled away.

“Back,” said Peter. He stole a glance at Mohinder, then colored and looked straight forward again. Mohinder spoke a few words of Hindi to the driver and off they went, honking and swerving through Delhi’s evening traffic.

Mohinder didn’t wait long after the door to their hotel room closed before his lips were on Peter’s, neither too hard, nor too soft, just urgent, teasing. He cupped his hands around the back of Peter’s neck, then took one of Peter’s hands in his and pulled back. “I didn’t really think you . . .” His eyes were wide, wondering, and Peter felt guilty, but he pushed that down. Mohinder couldn’t be expecting a lifetime of commitment, just this day, this week, perhaps a few months together, no more. Not when Peter still belonged to Nathan. Peter didn’t try to listen to his thoughts, though—he wanted this, just him and Mohinder, no jockeying for advantage.

Peter cupped Mohinder’s face with his hand, traced Mohinder’s lower lip with his thumb. This was how Nathan touched Peter’s face, watching for some reaction. He wondered if that was how he looked, his hunger as naked in his face as Mohinder’s, when Mohinder lowered his eyelids and sucked Peter’s thumb into his mouth, drawing patterns on it with his teeth and tongue.

“Shower first?” asked Mohinder. “Long day in the sun.” Mohinder smelled like sandalwood and cooking spices. The oils came out of his skin when he sweated; after being here and eating the food for six weeks, Peter started noticing the same smell on his own skin.

Peter didn’t mind the sweat, the thought of licking the salt off Mohinder’s cock made his own twitch in response, but maybe it would be nice to do this slowly.

“You first,” he said, but they ended up in the shower together, Peter on his knees, sucking Mohinder off, but standing up before Mohinder came. “Time for that later.”

They tumbled out onto the bed still wet from the shower. Peter licked the droplets of water from the dark disk of Mohinder’s nipple and winced slightly as their bodies scraped together, wet skin catching on wet skin. He took Mohinder in his mouth again, splaying his hands over the soft skin of Mohinder’s sides, teasing his tongue lightly, too lightly, along the Mohinder’s cock, around the tip, knowing it was maddening, feeling how maddening it was in Mohinder’s thoughts.

Mohinder pressed up toward Peter, silently pleading. He hissed as Peter slid a wet finger around his entrance and sucked harder. Mohinder spread his legs more and worked his hips toward Peter, which Peter took as all the invitation he needed. He worked a finger in and out, felt Mohinder’s cock soften slightly, and slowed. He wanted Mohinder to ask out loud, though, to hear that gorgeous voice begging. He slackened his mouth, just let the head of Mohinder’s cock slide between his lips, stilled his fingers.

“Please fuck me, Peter,” Mohinder said finally, digging his fingers into Peter’s arm. “Is that what you want to hear?” His voice was dry, for all the pleading in his thoughts, amused. Peter smiled and licked his way one more time around the width of Mohinder’s cock, then sat back on his heels.

“Like this?” he asked, pushing his fingers in a little further, so he could watch the expressions of pleasure and desperation chase across Mohinder’s features. Mohinder nodded, mouth open.

Peter rolled a condom on, and put some lube on his fingers. Mohinder was still very tight, so Peter fucked him slowly with his fingers for a while longer until Mohinder’s fingertips bit into his arm, and Mohinder said simply, “Peter.”

Peter slicked his cock with his fingers and lay it against Mohinder’s entrance.

“Peter,” said Mohinder, warning, exasperated, like _Nathan_ just for a moment, and Peter pushed in. Mohinder was tight and hot around him. Mohinder closed his eyes and rocked back with Peter’s motion. Peter felt momentarily bereft: that should be him being filled up. He slowed and reached out to touch Mohinder’s face. Mohinder opened his eyes, and the edges of his open mouth curved up.

Peter fucked him slowly, watching Mohinder getting closer to the edge. Mohinder thrust his hips up at Peter, trying to catch more of Peter into him, trying to get to the edge. When Peter wrapped his hand around Mohinder’s cock he came immediately, arching and digging his fingers into Peter’s hips as his seed spilled over Peter’s hand. Peter waited until the pulsing of Mohinder’s muscles around him slowed, feeling almost detached, some part of his mind wondering if this is what it felt like for Nathan, the power of being inside someone who wanted him so much.

The hair on Mohinder’s legs was soft against Peter’s sides. Mohinder tipped his hips up to pull Peter to him more, and Peter forgot to think about Nathan for a moment, and only saw Mohinder: beautiful, sweaty, gasping and begging. If Peter let go he could feel what Mohinder was feeling as well as himself, and so he did, lost himself in it until Mohinder brought Peter back to himself, pulling Peter’s head down and kissing him, so Peter called out his orgasm into Mohinder’s mouth.

He was sweaty enough to need another shower when he rolled off, pulled off the condom and threw it away. The ceiling fan stirred the humid air enough to cool the sheen clammy. Mohinder got up to use the bathroom, but leaned on the doorway before he went in. “You liked hearing me beg, Peter.” He sounded analytic, with just a touch of sultriness, but not embarrassed. “I wouldn’t have expected it.” _My turn next._

“Your turn next,” Peter said, so he could watch Mohinder smile.

They ate dinner in the hotel restaurant rather than brave the rain. Mohinder ate sparingly, complaining of the rich heavy food in the North, unsuited for such warm weather. The restaurant in the hotel was deserted—everyone who could afford to stay in this hotel wouldn’t be traveling in the rainy season. Peter could hear the rain lashed against the window by the gusts of wind, and wanted for a moment to be out in it.

“This is not new to you,” said Mohinder when he and Peter lay in bed again. The salty sourness of Mohinder’s come lingered in Peter’s mouth, and he reached across Mohinder to open a bottle of water, spilled some over his skin and licked it up.

“It’s not new to you either,” said Peter. He caught a glimpse in Mohinder’s mind of a dark haired boy, of Mohinder holding his hand over his mouth in the flickering light of a movie theater, trying to keep down the noises he made as the boy licked and sucked him to orgasm.

“I thought I was done with it when Mira came into my life but . . .” _Now there’s you._

Peter thought of Nathan briefly, but then put that out of his mind. He didn’t want any guests in this bed. Mohinder wasn’t a substitute for Nathan.

They rolled apart to sleep, but when Peter woke up, the room had cooled and Mohinder was wrapped around him, one arm over Peter’s waist, and his morning hard-on fit smoothly into the cleft of Peter’s ass. Outside the rain hissed against the windows, finer and lighter than the night before. The gray light coming in around the curtains hurt Peter’s eyes so he closed them again, and pushed back against Mohinder, teasing himself as the length of Mohinder’s cock rubbed against the sensitive skin there.

Mohinder woke enough to nuzzle Peter’s neck, and his hand on Peter’s waist reached down to trace along his thighs, teasing Peter’s hard. Peter turned his head to let Mohinder’s lips find his. He reached over to the night table for the condoms and lube and handed them wordlessly to Mohinder.

Mohinder’s slippery fingers replaced his cock between Peter’s ass cheeks. He rubbed softly around Peter’s entrance until Peter pushed back against him, soundlessly begging for more. He felt ready even now; empty, desperate to be filled.

“Greedy,” Mohinder murmured when Peter took in two of his fingers, and pressed back for more. Greedy, yes, and gasping when the head of Mohinder’s cock pushed in, just the head, fat and hard, but still not enough.

“Please,” said Peter, and he could feel Mohinder’s smile against his neck as he pushed all the way in—one stroke, finally filling Peter up.

“Yes,” Peter breathed. Mohinder stayed buried inside him, making small movements that fluttered Peter’s stomach. Mohinder kissed down Peter’s shoulder as his hands drew patterns on Peter’s chest. Peter could stay forever like this, Mohinder wrapped around him warm and fragrant.

Then Mohinder started to move slowly in and out, and Peter thought he could stay forever like that too, riding waves of pleasure, like bobbing in the ocean. He didn’t push back, just let Mohinder rock slowly into him.

Mohinder stopped again and they rearranged without speaking: Peter on his elbows and knees, Mohinder still inside of him, and now he fucked Peter harder, hitting deep inside him. Peter’s cock strained into the air, but he didn’t touch it; he wanted to come just from this.

Mohinder held Peter’s hips and pumped into him as Peter rocked back to meet him. He came a moment before Mohinder did, spilling onto the mattress, as Mohinder made a strangled cry and pushed into him one more time.

They showered together, soft and lazy from the sex. Mohinder ordered room service, a Western breakfast of eggs and toast, and Peter licked the marmalade from Mohinder’s fingers and lips.

***

They took a train up to Agra and saw the Taj Mahal at dawn the next day. Peter was surprised to learn Mohinder had never seen it.

“Growing up in the South of India, we were more likely to go to Switzerland on holiday,” Mohinder said. They took off their shoes and socks at the entrance way and walked in under the brick-red arch, away from the sellers and hawkers who plied their wares outside, even this early in the morning. Within was a long walkway, past buildings with stone screens in the windows until they turned a corner and saw it: the Taj Mahal, cast blue in the dawn light, reared up against the sky.

The crowd of early morning visitors stood, talking in hushed tones at one end of the plaza A huge reflecting pool in front, still as glass, showed the four spires shimmering in reverse.

“During the Mughal empire, one of the Shah’s built it as a tomb for his most beloved wife,” Mohinder told Peter in an undertone. They padded along the marble walkway in their sock feet, growing chilled, even as the sun climbed higher in the sky, making the marble spires glow pink as if from within.

“That’s love,” said Peter, to have something to say. Even with a hundred or so tourists there, the place still seemed empty. The building itself sat on a huge marble dais. Arabic writing ringed the entrance way to the tomb, looking so ornate and intertwined, Peter thought, it was hard to imagine anyone could read it.

“Are you going to study me?” Peter asked when the paced the perimeter, the marble edging from pink to gold. The sun caught the malachite and lapis in the inlay as it rose above the horizon.

“Would you let me?” Mohinder asked. “I would just need some DNA to start . . .” He turned and looked at Peter, away from the spires above. He smiled. “That’s not why I want you here, Peter.” He reached out to take Peter’s hand, slid his fingers between Peter’s own, warm in the early morning chill.

“Why then?” Peter asked.

Mohinder looked down, and Peter thought that if his skin could show a blush it would, then. “You are such a strange mixture, Peter Petrelli. Sometimes I think there is no end to your ego.”

“And sometimes?” Peter prompted.

“You don’t realize how special you are.” Mohinder glanced around, then sighed and looked down at their clasped hands. “Perhaps we can have a late breakfast,” he said with a smile.

The sun came up and crowds started to fill the walkway, spill out onto the manicured grounds. Mohinder walked ahead of him, but Peter stayed on the dais, watching him go on ahead. He weaved between women in colorful fabrics, men in their linen, never blending in. When he got to the other side of the reflecting pool he waved and Peter went to join him.

 **Nantucket, January 2011.**

Peter leaves the dishes soaking in the sink and jumps to Washington to find Bennet. He circles in closer over the White House where he knows Bennet is, pulling Candace’s strings. If he concentrates, he can feel that Robert, the Haitian is there too. _Switched sides again, or did he ever break with Bennet?_ He isn’t exerting his power-deadening, and anyway Peter isn’t sure it can affect him anymore.

It makes Peter’s heart jump into his throat to see Candace wearing Nathan’s form in the Oval Office, but the smirk on her face is no expression Nathan would ever wear. Bennet is there too, and the Haitian, who taps a long finger on his temple when Peter arrives, invisible, within the walls.

“Peter, glad you could join us,” says Bennet loudly. “You might as well make yourself visible.”

Peter does. Candace-as-Nathan jumps up, too spry, too _feminine_ ; Peter shudders and looks away.

“Do we have anything to worry about?” Bennet asked.

Peter forces himself not to lunge across the room at Candace, not to hurl her out the window. “You couldn’t stop me from going back in time and undoing this. From neutralizing all of you.”

“He was a bad President, Peter,” says Bennet. “You know this.”

“He wasn’t.”

Candace tightens her tie, tugs down the sleeves of her suit. That’s Nathan, more Nathan than Nathan himself now. “He was going to betray us, Peter,” she says in Nathan’s voice, the serious widening of her eyes a caricature of Nathan’s similar expression.

Bennet slides a note across the desk, covered with deals, HR numbers, and vote counts. Bennet sees Peter’s confused expression and explains. “He was going to sign an act requiring testing of all newborns for certain . . . traits.”

“Just so their parents know.”

“How long would it just be parents, Peter?” says Candace, still in Nathan’s voice, but if he concentrates, he can see her as she really is, a pale girl with small, light green eyes, a weak chin, and a permanent frown, her face doubled under Nathan’s.

“He wouldn’t have signed it.”

Bennet shrugs. “Nathan is going to need to leave the country.”

“What, tired of me already?” Candace says with Nathan’s voice.

Bennet glares at her.

“You’re right,” says Peter. “Somewhere remote. South America, maybe. Working permits for both of us, in as many countries. Set us up with a job in . . . Ecuador. I’ll be a nurse.”

Peter expects Bennet to protest, but he nods. “And what is Nathan going to be?”

Peter shrugs. Nathan remembers high school and college so maybe, “A teacher.”

“How should we get the papers to you?”

“I’ll come back.”

“Give us a week.”

“You’re going with him?” Robert asks. Peter looks at him; his face doesn’t look as opaque as it used to. Peter can’t read his mind, but he can see in Robert’s eyes a weight of sadness, of too many lives and memories trapped behind them to count.

Robert escorts Peter out of the White House. Peter could leave in a thousand different ways, but he doesn’t mind this opportunity. Perhaps he misjudged Robert; perhaps like Peter, he’s tried to subsume his will into that of whomever he thought would do the most good, and also like Peter, sometimes picked the wrong man.

“It is a terrible thing you did, Peter Petrelli,” he says as they walk along the back balconies. There’s no record of Peter in the White House, so he can’t leave by the door.

Peter wheels around to face him. “You’ve done far worse. You—”

Robert holds up his hand. “You did a terrible thing for a very good reason. It is the hardest burden to bear.”

“What should I do? I can’t leave him.” Peter would like to be talking about Mohinder, but he’s not. Nathan’s face is all he sees.

Robert shrugs. “Then do not.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Mysore, India, September 2008.**

Peter paid for plane tickets rather than take the train to Mysore. Mohinder smiled gratefully when Peter told him. Computers sat up and begged when Peter touched them now, thanks to Micah, and he told any machine he needed to accept his credit card. If Nathan stopped paying the bill, Peter could pull money straight from the Petrelli account, make it look like the charge had come from anywhere.

They walked the tourist trails along the sidewalks between colonial buildings and old temples. At Chamundi hill they walked up the thousand steps to the Chamundeeswari temple at the top. Climbing the steps was some kind of—not penance, Mohinder made a face when Peter suggested that, but some kind of supplication.

Peter wasn’t sure what Mohinder was asking for, or what he should ask for. He’d never asked for forgiveness for what passed between him and Nathan, for him that was sanctified, even if not by the rules of any religion Peter knew.

A third of the way up to the temple, they passed a stone statue of a bull, five stories high. Men in loin-cloths passed buckets up to others standing higher on rickety scaffolding around the bull. They washed off the stone, water sluicing the petals of marigolds off the bull’s flanks and down the stone steps. Peter stopped and watched as they rubbed it with oil so it gleamed wet and dark in the sunlight shining through the trees.

“Nandi, carved out of the living rock,” said Mohinder. “Shiva rides his back.”

Peter looked at the bull more carefully. It was a placid representation, sitting back on massive stone haunches, but it was the bull that the god of destruction rode.

“Shiva’s destruction is necessary to clear the way for other things,” said Mohinder, in a voice Peter had already fallen in love with. He was at his best teaching, and Peter loved to listen to him. He looked at Peter speculatively. “Things like you.”

“Things?” asked Peter, pretending to be insulted.

“Men like you then,” said Mohinder with a smile, refusing to rise to the bait. He resumed the climb upward, taking the stairs two at time with ease, and Peter followed, watching his trousers cling to the muscles in his legs.

Monkeys darted through the trees around them and Mohinder told Peter about where these particular monkeys fell on the evolutionary path toward human and beyond, and then he spoke of Hanuman, the monkey god and Rama’s lieutenant. When Peter fell asleep that night he dreamed of Mohinder telling him that Hanuman had created humans as some kind of cosmic joke.

***

They took a car to Goa next, and stayed in a hotel on the beach. “You’re getting impatient,” said Peter. They’d gone to an old wooden church, built by Portuguese missionaries, but Peter could see Mohinder’s interest waning. His own was as well.

They sat on the beach as the sun set. Peter dug his toes into the coarse sand, so different from the fine Nantucket sand. He’d never put his feet in the Arabian Sea before.

“I want to take up my father’s work again.”

“Back in the US?”

Mohinder shook his head. “Sylar is there. And Americans are so . . . suspicious. Here is better.” He smiled while looking out over the water. “Miracles are commonplace here, if you haven’t noticed. People with special abilities aren’t so strange. This might be the place to start.”

Peter couldn’t argue with him. Mohinder might complain about his superstitious countrymen, but it meant a healer wouldn’t be questioned. People came from all over the world to visit _sadhus_ and holy men. Peter would be one among many, even if his abilities were noticed.

He pushed his hand through the wet sand. Mohinder’s fingers found his there. _Should I ask him?_ Mohinder wondered to himself, caressing Peter’s hand gently so the sand wouldn’t scratch. Nathan might have rubbed harder to see Peter take it, to see him lap up the pain.

He tilted his head to one side and looked at Mohinder who turned to look back at him, a smile warming his eyes. “Ask me.”

“Will you come with me when I set up my lab?”

Peter missed pizza, food without spices, donuts, bagels from Murray’s so fresh they burnt his tongue. He missed Nathan, missed Claire, missed New York. He gripped Mohinder’s hand tighter. The evening air was cool, and smelled of the ocean.

“I’ll stay,” he said. “Is it going to be a problem for you?”

Mohinder looked out across the ocean, the sky turning from pink to purple as the sun faded away. “People see what they want to see. Even I . . . no one will know who we do not wish to know.”

“They might guess.”

Mohinder turned to him and took a deep breath. His eyes were wide, but he looked determined, almost defiant. “Let them.”

***

They found an apartment in a house in Bangalore. Bengaluru, Peter supposed he should be calling it. “It’s national pride,” said Mohinder with a shrug when Peter asked him the name change. “I’m not convinced it’s necessary but once Mumbai changed no one wanted to be left out.”

Peter smiled. No one would ever call 6th Avenue “The Avenue of the Americas” no matter how long the signs remained. Maybe New Yorkers were more stubborn.

The apartment was on a small hill in a residential section of Bangalore. It had two bedrooms, to maintain appearances. Mohinder said something to the agent in inexpert Kannada about Peter being a distant cousin from the states. Peter smirked at that, and listened as the exchange went on, Mohinder fabricating a story about an aunt married to a white man, and the family mayhem it caused. “But at least I have a roommate,” he finished.

The agent had his own story to tell about inappropriate marriages in his own family, and as he launched into it, Peter saw Mohinder’s shoulders relax.

The streets in their district were narrow streets pocked with holes and littered with stones. If Goa reminded Peter of Western Europe, Bangalore reminded him of San Diego. The weather was warm, sunny and breezy all the time, even without an ocean nearby.

The floors of their apartment were marble, cool under Peter’s feet, when the agent showed them around. Mohinder signed the lease and Peter put down the first three month’s rent.

Mohinder spent the first few months writing up proposals and sending them to biotech companies and universities, and was pleasantly surprised when the University of Bangalore set him up with a lab and a few student assistants.

“Professor Biwas says he followed my father’s work,” said Mohinder when he took Peter to meet the professor. Peter demonstrated a few of his talents and was surprised when Professor Biwas shook his hand warmly and thanked God that Mohinder had found him.

“There are others,” said Peter. “Probably plenty in India, too.”

“There is a _sadhu_ in the hills who people say can float over the river. Everyone who has gone to see him has told me this is true,” said Biwas. “Perhaps it is not all suggestion and hallucination.”

Peter floated up from the floor. “Perhaps not,” he said with a slight smile.

“We’re getting some of our funding from a US-based group,” Professor Biwas told Mohinder. Peter listened to the Professor’s thoughts and heard the name Bennet mentioned. It didn’t worry him, then.

“Where do they get their money?” Peter asked, interrupting more rudely than he intended.

“Some privately funded group. I gather this is rather . . . fringe there?”

“Fringe,” Mohinder said, and smiled ruefully. “You could say that. It is everywhere.”

“Not for long,” said Professor Biwas.

“How did you find him?” Peter heard Biwas ask in Tamil as they were taking their leave.

“I was driving his taxi,” said Mohinder in English. He glanced at Peter, and Peter felt a glimmer of suspicion from Biwas.

“Mohinder saved my life in New York,” Peter said. “Coming here to help was the least I could do.” He put an edge of firmness in his voice and Biwas’s suspicion subsided.

“Why did you do that?” Mohinder asked after they paid their driver and returned to the cool confines of their apartment.

“Do what?”

“Make excuses for us.”

“I don’t want to be a problem for you,” Peter said. He slipped off his shoes and pressed his toes against the cool slick of the marble floors.

“I know in New York you wouldn’t have to hide this,” said Mohinder, his tone apologetic.

In New York he wouldn’t have to hide it because Nathan would find away to make sure there was no “it.” “I don’t want to be anywhere else.”

He and Mohinder celebrated their new funding that night with Mohinder’s cousin Rahul at a local restaurant, then went home and celebrated more privately, Peter pressing kisses into Mohinder’s skin, and welcoming him in.

***

As Mohinder got his lab together, Peter started working at the local hospital. He used a combination of mind reading and some projection he’d picked up to keep anyone from questioning his presence. He healed broken bones, illnesses, cancers. After a few hours it exhausted him, and he went home to sleep, but day after day it grew easier, grew to look more like his dream. A few people’s lives were better because of Peter, and that was enough to make him happy.

In early November Peter looked at the English papers in a bookstore and saw Nathan’s face smiling out of them. He stepped back in shock. With India and Mohinder filling his senses he’d been able to ignore the wider world, but there was Nathan, next to the President. Heidi was there too, gazing adoringly up at him, and Peter couldn’t tell if it was genuine or not. He felt the familiar pang of jealousy, but muted, a memory of a feeling, rather than the feeling itself.

***

Once he learned where the roadside clinics where the truly indigent went, Peter started healing there as well. He gained a reputation and people sought him out.

In January Nathan’s face was in the papers again when he was sworn in. Mohinder noticed Peter’s silence during those days, and they made love gently, Peter letting Mohinder fill him up and push his memories away.

Mohinder was still asleep when Peter woke up the morning after the new President’s inauguration. Mohinder had flung the sheets off him during the night, and his skin was still damp from their sweat and the humid air.

He stirred when Peter got up and rolled onto his back, his mouth slightly open, hand resting on his stomach. It rose and fell with his breathing. His penis lay soft against his leg, darker than the skin of his thighs. Peter wanted to see if he could stir Mohinder’s cock into wakefulness before the rest of him, but hesitated. Nathan hated when Peter took liberties like that, and Peter did it anyway, part of the endless push and pull of their relationship.

Peter waited too long, until Mohinder opened his eyes. He looked at Peter and gave him a luxurious smile. “No second thoughts?” Mohinder asked. Peter’s lips moved with Mohinder’s smile. He was easy to love: none of the bruising, demanding possessiveness of the Petrellis.

“None at all.” He changed his plans slightly, since Mohinder was already awake. Peter kissed his way down Mohinder’s chest, nibbling at Mohinder’s nipple until it became hard against his tongue, down Mohinder’s side to the spot right below his ribs that could be ticklish or tantalizing, depending on what Peter did to it. He slid his hand up the inside of Mohinder’s thigh, parting his legs. Mohinder sighed, a lazy, happy sound, and then the phone rang.

Peter ignored it and continued to tease around Mohinder’s cock until it stood at attention. The phone rang a few times and then stopped. Peter took Mohinder into his mouth. Mohinder’s sighs became insistent moans, until the phone started ringing again.

“It must be urgent, whatever it is,” said Mohinder. Peter sighed picked up the phone.

“Peter, did you hear what happened?” The edge in Mrs. Petrelli’s voice conveyed her urgency, but if Peter hadn’t known her she would have sounded calm. Some instinct made him turn on the TV, flip past the cricket channels to CNN International, where a breaking news report interrupted their usual coverage.

“What? Is everyone alright?”

“Your brother is President. So I suppose it depends what you mean by everyone.”

“The President is dead? But they were just sworn in . . .”

Peter purposefully hadn’t watched the inauguration. He knew he could have seen Nathan at various balls, dancing with Heidi, with his mother. Seeing Nathan in the papers, ringed with the bars and curls of written Hindi or Kannada, was bad enough. Peter hadn’t even bought an English paper.

“You should come home, Peter, he’s going to need you more than ever.” Peter wanted to ask more, but his mother took his silence as a farewell, maybe even assent, and Peter heard the click of the line on the other end disconnecting.

Peter paced slowly over to the window and pulled back the white curtains. It was going to be a hot day. The sun had already bleached the sky to a yellowish white, and the window was hot to the touch.

He hadn’t felt a thing. A near miss, and Nathan’s dreams came true, and Peter had been buried hip deep in Mohinder when it happened. He should have at least dreamed it, felt Nathan’s worry and exultation along with him. He felt the fingers of homesickness close around his throat, the tether that attached him back to New York, back to Nathan.

“I think I should go,” said Peter. He looked at Mohinder, whose eyes were dark and serious, confusion behind them. “I should have been there.”

“Why? What would you have done?”

“I don’t know. Saved him?”

“I thought your brother wanted to be President.”

“Not like this,” Peter said, automatically, but he _knew_. Nathan was too often the beneficiary of fate, and either he’d helped fate along this time or seen fate coming for the President and simply made sure he was out of the way.

“I’ll understand if you want to go back and see him,” said Mohinder that evening while Peter picked at a lentil _dosa_. His voice was a little bitter.

“I don’t,” said Peter. Even seeing Nathan on the television had been a shock. Peter’s heart went faster simply from seeing Nathan’s public face, the façade that never broke, never let a piece of himself through.

“Peter, you can tell me the truth. I’m not happy about it, but . . .” Mohinder pressed his lips together, an expression so reminiscent of Nathan that Peter had to turn away. “I understand he’s family. I only wish you’d tell me what happened between you. Why you left.”

Peter thought of their last time together, Nathan basking in the glow of his successful speech at the DNC, drawing Peter along in his celebration. He wondered who Nathan would celebrate with tonight.

Peter longed, for a moment, to see one of the smiles that Nathan reserved for him, the slow blooming smile instead of this stern sadness on TV—feigned or not, Peter couldn’t tell from the quick cuts of the news cameras. He said he’d give a speech in the evening, India’s morning, and then he’d be inaugurated a few days later. Peter hadn’t watched the first one—was it worth watching the second?

“We argued about our powers.” It was a poor, condensed version of the story, and one he’d told Mohinder before.

“You say his name when you sleep,” said Mohinder. “If I didn’t know better . . .” He opened his mouth to say more, and then closed it again, but Peter heard the rest as if it were spoken. _I’d think you were lovers._

Peter raised his eyebrows at Mohinder, since Mohinder would know he was listening. “Being betrayed by family is worse,” he said, feeling uncomfortable dissembling like that. _Nathan would be proud . . ._

***

He sucked Mohinder off before they went to sleep, wanting to hear in Mohinder’s moans and unguarded thoughts the reasons he should stay. Mohinder fell asleep afterward, after Peter shrugged off his attempts to return the favor. He knew he was being difficult before he even heard Mohinder’s sigh of frustration.

Peter sat up and looked out over the city, sooty and dark pink from fluorescent streetlights shining through the smoky air. He didn’t feel the urge to step out into it, except that out there, ten thousand miles away, Nathan was preparing for his inauguration, the work of a lifetime, handed to him in an instant. He wondered if Nathan was happy there without him, if some woman— _or man_ —opened herself for him. He imagined Nathan’s pleased, predatory smile as he says, “Let’s celebrate.”

And then he was there, the Vice President’s mansion on Massachusetts Ave. It was early morning there, barely a hint of blue on the horizon, but Nathan was already up, pacing around, going over words under his breath, although Peter could hear them loud from his mind. The words of a speech, and under that a plea, _don’t let me screw up_.

Nathan looked older, the lines etched deep around his mouth, though only six months had passed. Peter’s kept seeing Nathan’s face in his memory from when they were both younger: his smooth cheeks, his too-intense acquisitive green eyes. “Peter,” said Nathan, out loud, interrupting the cadence of his rehearsal.

“Who killed him, Nathan?” asked Peter. He turned visible, kept a bubble of force in front of him to keep Nathan away if he wanted to cross the distance between them, wanted to _touch_ Peter and break his resolve.

Nathan spread his hands. “I don’t know. No one does. It was someone with . . . powers. Someone who can do what you do.”

Peter caught something then, a touch, a tingle of suspicion. “You think you know who did it. You’re not going to say anything, again, you’re just going to take and take like you always do.”

Nathan walked forward and into Peter’s barrier. He raised his eyebrows, a hint of disappointment furrowing his forehead then turned back away from him. “I don’t know, Peter. But who’s been pulling the strings up until now, hmmm? Who could make all this happen? Who would?”

Only one person that Peter could think of, who still lived. _Mom._ “If you really think that she was working with Linderman all that time . . . I thought when you saved me, I thought that was the end of it. Nathan, you told me.”

“You left, Peter.”

“You’re better than this, Nathan. You can’t take office now.” Now he crossed the room and put his hand on Nathan’s shoulder, turned Nathan’s body to face him.

“Who else, Peter? Linderman had a painting; it showed me in the White House.”

“The future isn’t set in stone.”

“You still exploded. And I have a speech to give.” His gaze dropped to Peter’s lips, until Peter felt the urge to touch them self-consciously, or ease the sensation by kissing Nathan. “Stay, Peter,” said Nathan quietly. “Stay.”

Peter backed away. “I can’t, Nathan. You were supposed to be better than this.”

Nathan’s memories show Peter falling back, out of Nathan’s hands then, that’s what Nathan remembers: not being able to hold on. Peter simply remembers stepping back through space to India, to Mohinder.

Mohinder sat up when Peter appeared. “I went there,” he said. Mohinder sat up and put his hands on Peter’s shoulders, warm where Nathan’s had been cold with the chill of morning. “He’s . . .” and Peter couldn’t finish, thinking of Nathan facing death for him, Nathan throwing away all those dreams to keep Peter and New York safe, only to take being saved as some kind of permission to take everything else he could, regardless of how it came into his hands.

The curtains were still open where Peter had left them. “Come back to bed,” said Mohinder, standing behind him at the window.

Peter turned and kissed him, thinking of nothing at all, shutting out the sounds of a million voices around him, the awareness that all his powers gave him, now unwelcome. “I want to forget,” he said, and Mohinder drove all the thoughts from his head, for an hour, anyway.

***

That should have been the end, Peter thinks. He avoided the papers in India, but he couldn’t keep from hearing about Nathan’s presidency entirely. When Nathan made a trip to India in the winter of 2009, Peter begged Mohinder go to on vacation with him and they rented a house in a hill station in the Himalayan foothills until Nathan left again.

Nathan hadn’t searched for him; the trip had gone to Calcutta and Delhi, and never south to Bangalore. Mrs. Petrelli asked Nathan to look for him, Peter saw in Nathan’s memories, but Nathan had let him go.

Peter searches through Nathan’s memories for when their mother re-entered Nathan’s life. She simply appears one day in the waiting room for the oval office.

“I see,” is the first thing Nathan says to her, after years apart. He looks at Mrs. Petrelli’s quick and icy smile, the black and white chiaroscuro of her outfit. “Heidi not as malleable as you hoped?”

She doesn’t say anything, just sweeps her eyes over the room, lingering slightly on a few objects, a photo of Peter, prominently displayed. “He’s gone, Nathan.”

Nathan’s jaw tightens. “I know that, Ma.”

“You tried to save him, and he couldn’t be saved.”

Nathan thinks that he should know by now how easy this is for her, the twisting of the knife, the talons kept hidden under her black gloves, but every time it surprises him. “He went his own way. Not surprising, really.”

“He abandoned you.”

“He told me about this. You used to say the same things to him about me.”

She looks down, pursed her lips slightly, neither confirming nor denying. Peters wonders again, if not for being born a woman at the wrong time, wrong nationality, would she have found her way to this office and spared her sons the burden of her stifled ambition?

“You’re back, Ma, so I assume you want something. What is it?”

Her lips tip up again in that faint smile, and Nathan can see she’s considering some rebuke, some guilt trip, but he sees through those now, or likes to think he does.

“You’re here because of me, Nathan.” There’s a bit of knowledge that Nathan doesn’t want tantalizing him in her words. Nathan has wrapped his lack of knowledge about the President’s death around himself like armor, and she threatens to pierce it.

There’s a threat in her eyes. _Don’t let Peter be right,_ he thinks.

“I just want my family back, Nathan.” She leans her forehead on one gloved hand, looking the part of a weary mother. “Back together.”

“That’s rich. Heidi wouldn’t have—.”

“Heidi might forgive you for choosing Peter over her, but never for the secrets. Never for Claire.”

“I guess she won’t forgive you for that either.”

“Bring Peter back, Nathan.” The emotion in her eyes looks genuine this time. “We need him.”

“Peter won’t come back as long as I’m President.” He looks at her curiously. It’s a truth that's ceased to hurt unless he digs at it.

“He’s weak,” she says. “He’ll come if you ask.” Nathan raises his eyebrows slightly. “I’m staying at the Watergate.” She tilts her cheek up for a kiss.

“Try not to commit treason while you’re there.”

She pats his cheek and allows his secretary to show her out of the Oval Office. Nathan leans back on the desk and looks at Peter’s picture. Nathan took the picture at Peter’s nursing school pinning ceremony. He’d rolled his eyes and complained about being there, but he remembered being proud of Peter standing up there, his eyes brimming with hope. All of Peter’s classmates had good things to say about him, called him their big brother and when Peter introduced them to his family he told them Nathan taught him how.

***

Bennet called Peter a few days after Mohinder’s article on human evolution made the cover of _Science_. Peter and Mohinder had been celebrating with his research team, an impromptu party in their dining room.

Mohinder was making his second toast for the evening when the phone rang. Peter got up to answer it, expecting another congratulatory call, but instead it was Claire.

“Hi, Peter, how are you?” she asked.

Peter moved the phone to his other ear, and took it into the study. He cleared the stack of magazines Mohinder had ordered to give to his family and colleagues off the chair and sat down. “Claire, is everything alright? It’s great to hear from you.”

“Everyone’s fine. Look, Peter, my dad wants to talk to you.”

“What’s this about, Claire?”

“This wasn’t my idea, but I support it. I’m sorry it has to be this way.”

“Claire!” Peter said.

“Claire’s not here anymore,” said Bennet. “We need to talk.”

“What’s going on?”

“Five years ago, you saved my daughter’s life. Now I’m going to return the favor.”

“What have you done to Nathan?” Peter heard the laughing and talking in the dining room still as his voice grew loud. “Tell me,” he said more quietly.

“Nathan is no longer useful to us. He needs to be replaced. You get him out, or we will.”

“Why? What did Nathan do to you?”

“You could say he’s not very sympathetic to our cause. Not as much as he could be. We need someone we can trust. You get him out of the White House, or we will.”

“He’ll never leave voluntarily. I _know_ him.”

“Yes, yes you do.” Bennet’s voice hinted at things only Peter and Nathan should know. “We’d rather he left and let Candace step in. If not . . . well, impeachment is messy, and we’d rather have Candace take over the role of a President like your brother than wait for someone new to be sworn in. She’s been studying.”

“Impeachment. You can’t impeach him.”

“His election was stolen, Peter, or have you forgotten that.”

“You’re the one who said—”

“I’m sure I don’t need to spell it out for you, Peter. It’s much easier to replace a dead president than one whose name has been dragged through the mud.”

“You’re going to _kill_ him?”

“That’s right, Peter.” The condescension in Bennet’s voice had never been more irritating.

“I won’t let you.”

“Then find some other way to remove him. Your way or ours. You have one week.” The phone went dead.

Peter went out into the dining room. Mohinder stopped mid-speech when he saw Peter’s face. He put down his glass and pulled Peter back into the study.

“Peter, tell me what’s wrong.”

Peter looked around wildly. “It’s Nathan. I have to go save him.”

“I see.” Mohinder pulled his hand away from Peter’s arm. “Will you be coming back?”

“Of course.” Peter patted himself down for keys, a wallet. He’d be in the country illegally, but there wasn’t any time to take a plane.

“Peter . . .” Mohinder’s eyes were pleading.

Peter forced himself to stop for a moment, to push down the panic, and give Mohinder some kind of goodbye. He kissed Mohinder’s forehead and said, “I’ll try.”

 **Nantucket, January, 2011.**

Nathan is asleep when Peter returns from Washington, curled under a blanket on the pullout couch. The TV is on, turned to a grainy CNN. They’ve stopped rehashing the news from Washington and turned to flooding in Calcutta. Peter wonders if Mohinder’s family there is okay.

A thin crackling of ice covers the dishes in the sink. Peter breaks it and drains the water so the ice won’t crack the dishes when the night grows even colder.

He nudges Nathan awake and takes him upstairs to bed. Peter wraps himself around Nathan under heavy comforters. “Where were you?” Nathan asks, settling back against Peter.

“Washington. We’re going some place warm.”

“We?”

“I’m going where you're going,” says Peter. He kisses the back of Nathan’s neck, unthinking, and feels Nathan’s back stiffen against him. “I’m sorry, I forgot . . .” He wonders if that is over between them, if he’s done too much for Nathan ever to forgive him. He wants Nathan now, wants his punishment and forgiveness written into his flesh.

Nathan turns so they’re facing, a trace of a smile playing on his lips. “Some place warm?” He kisses Peter gently on the mouth, some hint of what they had before there, then sighs and turns away to sleep.

They pack up the next day, and Peter blinks them to a hotel in Arlington. He uses Candace’s power to make them appear as a young couple. The room has a view of the Jefferson Memorial, across the frozen expanse of river.

Peter visits Bennet in the White House again. Bennet has papers prepared for them, new names, visas, a _précis_ of their new lives. “What if I need something else?”

“Will you?” asks Bennet, unfriendly.

“I hope not.” He thumbs through the papers. There are work visas for dozens of countries, and the first year of rent paid on a farmhouse in Otavalo, Ecuador.

“You let me save Nathan,” says Peter, voice heavy with sarcasm. “So I’m going to return the favor. Watch out for my mother. If she finds out what you’ve done, there won’t be a corner of the world safe for you.” He smiles wolfishly.

Peter sees Bennet’s throat work as he swallows but he says, “Thanks for the warning,” mildly enough. Peter can just imagine it. She’ll find some way to make Bennet pay. Peter only hopes Claire doesn’t have to suffer too much for it.

“Have”—he tilts his chin at Robert, unwilling to say his name in case Robert has never revealed it to Bennet—“the Haitian come to my hotel this evening.”

“Peter . . .” says Bennet warningly.

“I’m not going to hurt him. I promise.”

“I will go,” says Robert.

“Never contact me again,” says Peter, and Bennet nods. He doesn’t try to extend his hand, doesn’t say goodbye.

Peter blinks back to the hotel. Nathan is reading the paper, turning to news on the vote for the Equal Human Rights Amendment. “Didn’t I support this?”

Peter shakes his head. “Nathan, I have to say goodbye to someone. I’ll be back soon, I promise.” He kisses Nathan’s cheek.

He closes his eyes and blinks to Mohinder’s apartment in Bangalore. The air smells strange to him again, like it did when he first visited. Mohinder is asleep, but he wakes when Peter sits down next to him on the bed.

“This is goodbye, isn’t it?” says Mohinder when he sees Peter’s face. Peter nods, not trusting himself to speak. “I knew it couldn’t . . . you’ll always love him more.”

“You never . . .”

“You can’t ask people not to love their family, Peter.” Peter wonders if Mohinder has taken his guess the one step further. It’s probably better this way, that Mohinder’s rival is a brother and not another lover. Easier for him to live with.

“I love you both,” says Peter. “But he needs me more.”

“But most family doesn’t make you choose.” His voice is harder now.

“He didn’t make me . . .”

“That doesn’t make it any better.”

Peter jumps up and starts pacing the floor. He still has his shoes on, unheard of in their house. Everyone takes their shoes off at the door. “I need to keep him safe. No one can know.”

“Not even me,” says Mohinder flatly. “He could hide here, Peter.”

Peter can hear the hesitation in his voice, though. Nathan here would be a complication. “You don’t want that.”

“Of course it would be strange. But that’s just an excuse.”

“Nathan . . . can’t come here.”

“Why not? I don’t want you to leave.”

Peter sits down next to him again. “I’ve done things . . . I can’t . . .”

Mohinder does imagine Peter and Nathan together, now Peter can see the image in his mind, Peter under Nathan’s hands looking the same as he does under Mohinder’s. “What is it, Peter?” Mohinder asks, concern warring with the anger in his voice. He’ll fight Nathan for Peter if he must.

Peter shakes his head. “There’s something I have to do . . .” His voice breaks. “I’m so sorry.”

“Peter, can’t you say no to him? Please.”

“He didn’t ask this time. But it’s what I need to do.”

Something in Peter’s voice decides him. Mohinder puts his hands on Peter’s shoulders and turns Peter to face him. He kisses both of Peter’s cheeks, and then his forehead. “Will I see you again?”

“No. And if you do . . . don’t look for me. Promise me.”

Mohinder nods. Peter kisses him on the lips, softly, one last time. “Goodbye.” He touches Mohinder’s lips with his fingertips.

“Peter,” Mohinder says after he pulls away. Peter swallows hard and blinks back to Washington, before Mohinder can say anything more.

***

Nathan looks surprised to see him when Peter jumps back to the hotel. He looks at Peter’s face, smudged with tears. “Where were you?”

“Saying goodbye.” Peter fights down the tremor in his voice.

He takes a deep breath and sits down next to Nathan on the bed. Nathan frowns at him, worry lines etching his forehead. “Peter, what’s going on?”

Peter kisses Nathan on the lips and then touches his Nathan’s face, erasing wrinkles and memories at the same time, plucking from Nathan’s mind any memory that he was once President. He leaves what he can of the last week, Nathan’s new weakness, his humility, and the knowledge, Peter hopes, that he would do anything for Nathan.

He heals Nathan as deeply as he can, trying to erase the age from his body. He swore he’d never do this, after he got this power, heal beyond natural aging—the term of human life is limited for a reason—but this is Nathan, and rules never applied to the two of them. They need another chance. He sees the gray disappear from Nathan’s hair under his hands, his jaw line smoothes out like clay under Peter’s fingers.

Nathan looks Peter’s age now, both just over thirty, plenty of time left. If Peter concentrates, he can feel the vigor of youth that Nathan feels now, where once middle age had started to stake its claim.

“Peter?” Nathan looks slightly lost again, like he did the first time Peter took his memories. He touches Peter’s face, like they’ve been apart for a long time. In a way they have.

The front desk rings and sends Robert up to their room. “What can I do for you, Peter?” he asks when Peter opens the door. His face betrays no surprise at Nathan’s appearance.

“Take my memories,” says Peter. Robert shows no surprise at that either. He takes a step toward Peter.

“Peter, what are you doing?” Nathan moves to put himself between Peter and Robert. “I can’t let you do this.”

“It’s the only way, Nathan.”

“Take them,” he says to Robert. “Everything except nursing. I’ll need that.” Robert bows his head gravely. Peter wonders, again, how he lives with all those memories in his head, why he goes on like this, but Robert’s mind has always been closed to him.

Peters touches his fingers to his lips, which wear Mohinder’s and Nathan’s kisses. A matched set, but Peter can’t keep both.

“Take all my memories after eighteen. Make me like him.”

Robert shakes his head, eyes wide. “You have to,” says Peter. He lets fire play over his fingertips, one last dance with that power. Peter’s talent for mimicry depends on memory, and he’ll lose everything. That’s as it should be. No one will try to exploit him or Nathan again.

“You truly want this,” says Robert in his rarely used voice, the accent fluid where the words are halting.

“Yes.”

Robert puts his fingers on Peter’s temples. Peter closes his eyes. All he can think is of falling into a deep down, comforter, all pain fading away.

When he opens his eyes again, the first thing he sees is Nathan: his twin, his brother, his lover. “Nathan.”

“Peter.” Nathan furrows his brow, and Peter’s heart leaps at it—he could look at Nathan’s face forever. “Where . . . what happened?” Peter puts lips to Nathan’s forehead and smoothes out the line there.

“I’m Peter. You’re Nathan,” he says. “I don’t think we need to know anything else.”

  
 **Epilogue.**

They make their way by slow degrees across the country to Texas. Peter finds a note in his pocket, written in his own hasty handwriting. It tells them to move softly, take buses and trains. It tells Peter not to let Nathan shave for a time. Nathan bitches about that, although something in his expression makes Peter think he knows more than Peter does about what’s going on in the here and now.

That first day they sit nestled together on a bus, watching the country go by, industrial towns, fields of grain. They don’t talk much, but the moments they have to be apart almost hurt. Peter doesn’t want to stop touching Nathan’s skin. It’s the only thing that feels like home.

He doesn’t show Nathan the note, for reasons he can’t entirely explain. There is a list of people to avoid, and one picture: a young Indian man, with a beautiful smile. Peter wonders who they were to each other. If Nathan saw the list, would he want to find out who those people were, use them as clues to piece their old life together?

There are obscure references in the letter, to powers and secret organizations, things Peter can’t interpret, except in how they telegraph the need for secrecy, the need never to reveal the Petrelli name, to live simply, helping people, to stay as far from the limelight as they can.

Peter rests his head on Nathan’s shoulder, and Nathan smoothes back his hair as they look out the window. The other passengers on the bus look at them strangely for a moment, probably taking them for lovers, not brothers, but Peter doesn’t care. They’re anonymous here.

“I missed you,” says Peter, when he lies down next to Nathan in their first hotel room, somewhere in western Virginia. His memories are confused. Nursing school is there, but no specifics memories, just physiology classes, clinicals, the feel of pushing an IV into an arm. He remembers no fellow students, no family events from that time. It feels like years since he was with Nathan.

Nathan holds him at arm’s length for a moment, although his fingers caress the naked skin of Peter’s shoulder. “Peter, this isn’t right.”

Peter smiles. He remembers that much. “You used to say that, but then you stopped.”

“Stopped doing this?”

“Stopped saying it.”

Nathan smiles sadly. They touch slowly, remembering old paths, tracing out new ones. No urgency at first; they have all the time in the world, and nothing in it but each other. They fuck face-to-face, chests touching. Peter bruises Nathan’s hips pulling him in, and Nathan bites his lip.

The next day they hardly touch at all on the bus. Peter wants to, but when Nathan’s hand glides over his shoulder, Peter gets instantly hard, and has to push him away to keep from being too obvious right there on the bus. Instead he looks out the window again, at the red dirt in the south that gives way to dry Texas plains.

After checking into the hotel, Peter climbs onto Nathan’s lap and lets Nathan into him that way, his chest pressed against Peter’s back, their hands clasped together.

He catches Nathan looking at him with regret he won’t explain when Peter asks.

They achieve Texas and then Mexico by slow degrees. The letter Peter left himself becomes wrinkled and crushed in his pocket. He hides it in the bottom of his suitcase.

The bus takes them across the border; the guards hardly look twice at their passports. They sleep in a series of seedy motels and hotels in Mexico and countries south, take smaller and more rickety buses, until they reach Otavalo, a small city north of Quito.

The mayor of the village is expecting them. “Hermanos Rosso?” he asks, giving the last name their papers supplied for them.

Peter nods. “Si, hermanos.”

The mayor shows them to a farmhouse with a tiled roof that sits on the lower slopes of a dormant volcano. A patchwork of fields ring the lower slopes, and above a few sheep graze. Peter climbs up as high as he can a few days after they arrive, but they are already at 8000 feet here, and he tires quickly.

He sits down on a boulder and looks out over the lake in the distance. He’s had a few days to set up at the clinic, get to know the staff. There are a few doctors, a few nurses. Peter’s high school Spanish gets a work out, but people speak slowly with him, help him along. Nathan’s Spanish is better; he always had a good ear for language, among his many other talents. The local high school is happy to have Nathan teach English to the students.

It’s cold up here on the flank of the mountain, even in at the equator. Peter wraps his jacket close around him. He springs to his feet in surprise when Nathan taps him on the shoulder, sending a clatter of small stones down the mountain.

“Nathan, how did you get up here?”

“I flew.” He smiles, wide and triumphant.

“What?” Nathan lifts into the air, still grinning. “Nathan, how is this possible?” But his mind is turning; this must be what his note meant about powers. Powers they need to keep hidden. They still have a few secrets here.

“You can fly? What can I do?”

“You can fly too.”

“Really?” Nathan nods, then steps in close, grabs him around the waist and zooms into the air with him.

***

Over the next six months, they make improvements to the house and plant a garden. Nathan makes a few false starts before finally wiring the bedroom for electricity, so they can have reading lamps by the bed they share. They have another room, with another bed, for appearances, but as brothers, no one cares what they do.

They take a few trips to Quito to buy books in English, to reconnect with the outside world, but they are both wary of too much contact. Peter saves the note pressed between the pages of an anatomy book, in case he ever needs to show Nathan, to prove that they need to stay hidden, but Nathan settles into their life here; any wish to leave buried where Peter can’t see it.

“I dreamt about Las Vegas,” says Nathan when he wakes up one morning. “I was flying over it.” The days are the same length here at the equator; the sun wakes them up at six every morning. “Crazy, huh?”

“Not really.” Peter reaches over and tangles his fingers through the hair on Nathan’s chest before settling his hands there, feeling it rise and fall with Nathan’s breathing. “You can fly. I wish you were happier here.”

Nathan rolls onto one side and props his head up on his elbow. “I don’t think I’ve ever been a happy person.” He makes the face Peter associates with him trying to remember, reaching into that big blank space they both have. Peter wonders if they’ll ever be free of that, learn to live without missing it. He touches Peter: cheek, shoulder and hip. Peter feels a rush of gratitude for this at least. They have to hide it from the villagers, but at least they can be together. He remembers enough to know it wouldn’t have been possible before the gap in their memories.

“That could change,” says Peter, as Nathan’s touches turn less casual. Nathan watches, a frown furrowing his brow, as Peter shudders under his touch. He feels a pleasurable wave of embarrassment at having Nathan _watch_ him like this, but this is how Nathan likes it sometimes, seeing Peter helpless in his hands.

Nathan told him late one night, when he thought Peter was asleep that when they touch like this, it’s the closest he gets to memory.

“Your turn,” says Peter breathlessly after Nathan jerks him off. He burrows under the blanket, eager for the taste of Nathan in his mouth. They’ve been falling asleep early this week, exhausted from helping a neighbor root up saplings in his long unused back pasture. Nathan thinks they’re being taken advantage of, but Peter doesn’t mind building goodwill with the neighbors, even at the expense of some sore muscles. He grumbled about it, until Peter offered to massage out the stiffness

“No,” says Nathan, after Peter’s licked a couple of strokes up the underside of Nathan’s cock, felt it thickening between his lips. “Big game against Peguche today.”

Peter looks up from under the covers. “And you’d rather be keyed up for that?”

Nathan gives him a small smile, just a quirk of his lips. “I want to save something for the victory dance.” He gets out of bed, still half-hard. Peter watches the long, muscular lines of his legs as he pulls on his boxers and goes out into the kitchen to put on coffee.

“You’re sure you’re going to win?” Peter calls out.

Nathan pokes his head back into the bedroom. “Of course. I’m on the team, aren’t I?” he asks with a grin.

Peter goes to watch and drinks beer on the sidelines with some of the locals. Peter loves watching Nathan play soccer— _futbol._ He’s a vicious, elegant player, swiveling his hips to guide the ball between the defenders’ feet.

One of the players on their side twists his ankle. After making sure it’s just a sprain, Peter replaces him as a wing-back. Their team wins, and later that afternoon, Peter licks the sweat from Nathan’s skin before heading in for his late shift at the clinic.

A gaggle of children follow Peter into the clinic. He heals the sick ones, and takes their payment in coins, in promises, in bread wrapped in beautifully woven towels and in their smiles. He walks home after the evening rain to find a dinner Nathan prepared on the table.

“Some of these kids are really smart,” says Nathan, when Peter’s mouth is full of ceviche. Nathan says he likes to make it because it doesn’t require any real cooking, but he’s just being modest.

“Really, Nathan,” says Peter after he chews and swallows. “That’s shocking.” Nathan rolls his eyes. “You like teaching them don’t you?”

Nathan rolls his eyes, but then he leans back in his chair and puts his hands behind his head, cracking a big grin. “It’s not bad. I wonder if I liked being a lawyer. I don’t remember a single class from law school.”

Peter remembers Nathan older than Nathan remembers himself. Peter remembers fights with their father, political ambitions and secrets. The present is much better. “I don’t know,” he says, smiling. “Does it matter?”

“Maybe not. How long do you think we’ll stay here?”

“’Til someone comes looking for us, I guess.” The beautiful scientist, or someone else. They have papers for most of the South American countries, and a big bank account in their new names. They’ll survive.

That night, Peter takes out his letter again, as Nathan reads by the fire. Much of it is instructions Peter has already carried out, practical details, but there are a few broader statements, which he re-reads for clues, not the what—that he’ll never know—but the why.

 _Don’t look for answers, don’t try to fill in the past; you may not like what you find,_ reads the last paragraph.

There’s a line crossed out deeply after that, scored and scratched through. Peter’s tried to puzzle it out, but it’s too thoroughly erased.

 _You searched a long time for a way to make a difference, but helping one person at time really is the surest way. Try to help Nathan see that, and try to keep him happy. It won’t be easy._

A few more words are crossed out, false starts, it looks like. _There’s no good way to end this letter. Life doesn’t have any sure answers. We make our own destiny. I hope this is the right choice._

The letter isn’t signed. Peter folds it up and puts it back in the textbook. Nathan yawns, and puts down his reading.

Peter follows him into their bedroom and lies down next to him. He can see the stars through the window. If he wants he can go out flying under them. But Nathan is tired, and his arms hold Peter here. Peter turns on his side so Nathan can wrap around him and falls asleep, cool air on his face and Nathan’s breath warming his neck.


End file.
